


Changeling

by Cluegirl



Series: Changelings [1]
Category: The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alpha Bruce, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Consent issues inherent to the genre, M/M, Omega Tony, PTSD, Pack Bonding, Sex Rituals, Steve just can't catch a break can he?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-22
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-09 06:07:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 65,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/770875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve had things under control; his status was his own secret, and so long as he was alpha enough to lead the team on the battlefield, he could fit himself quietly into the cracks for the rest of the time.  No need to fight anybody for dominance, because the serum's gift of full control over his status and sexuality meant he could be as neutral as a child when he wanted to be.   Which mostly, he did.  He kept the past in the past, and his junk in his pants, and called it success, but life, biology, and luck have a way of bringing hidden things to the surface, and the truth about Steve's status is the very least of the secrets about to come bubbling to the surface.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Rising River

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my betae, Amanuensis, Adrith, Dulcinbradbury, and Pheylan for their help and handholding through this. Also, for those unfamiliar with a/b/o universe bizarreness, have a look at [this meta over here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/403644) before you proceed. It'll help things seem a little less incomprehensible. I think.

_Monday_

"Hey, Tony, can I talk to you for a WHOA!"

"Not a good time, Cap! Catch it! No, don't let it get to the- NO DON'T CRUSH… dammit."

"Tony, what the heck is going-"

"NOT a good time! Toss that over here and get- DUMMY! Damn it where did you put that fire extinguisher this time?! You! Spangles! You're in the way. Hoof it, now!"

"Sure…"

~*~

He's got time. He's sure of it. He can remember being a lot worse off than this. Before, back when he was too weak and sickly and small to make anything at all of it.

It's just a precaution he's thinking of, is all, because Tony's an Ought – omega, they call them now. Steve needs to get used to the word, however harsh and clinical it sounds to him. Anyway, Tony's got to know something about how it's handled nowadays. Because the serum changed everything for him, and now Steve just doesn't know what will... no, nothing will come of it. He'll probably have a weak little flash fever like he always used to when he was too sick and tiny to have a real heat, and then when the serum kicks back in and gives him back his self-control, he'll be able to shut the cycle down before anybody really notices. 

He's not broken. A week in the wild alone is all it was. A week without food or shelter, cold, injured, lost -- it was a shock to his system that upset the rhythms he'd maintained since coming out of the ice. The serum had its hands full keeping him going, healing the injuries from the Quinjet crash, and getting him to the tiny Appalachian town in one piece. Keeping his sex under control like he usually did hadn't exactly ranked high on the triage list while Steve had been out there.

But Steve's been home for two weeks, and he's fine now. Cleared for full duty, back to normal, whole and sound and not even thirsty, just… heating up a little, is all. Just having those low, throbbing aches in his back, that make him wake up half hard and panting, sheets soaked, but not with sweat. Just smelling sex on everyone, and _squirming_ inside; half ready to roll his eyes closed, lean in close and scent-taste any or all of them, half ready to bolt for the nearest sink and throw his guts up instead. Just his stomach in perpetual knots, appetite checked out for good, head swimming, brain scattering, his attention shot to hell and back, and his dick in some state of hardness that his clothes can barely conceal for days on end. 

He's just heating up, is all -- for the first time since he turned twenty. His first heat in seventy five years. It's nothing he needs to panic anyone about. He'll be fine. It'll all be fine.

~*~

_Tuesday_

"Jarvis?"

"Yes, Captain?"

"Could you tell me… that panic room in Bruce's lab, has he needed to use it yet?"

"I presume you mean for containment of an involuntary transition?"

"Sure, I guess. But I really meant was, has the Hulk ever tried really hard to get out of there?"

"I suspect not. Dr. Banner has transitioned for the purposes of stress testing the containment unit, but Sir has always been present to release him when the test was complete. There has thusfar been no involuntary incident at Stark Tower."

"Right. And is Dr. Banner working on something… um… interruptible right now?"

"While the compounds currently exposed upon his workstation are volatile, Captain, the situation does not seem particularly… oh. Oh dear. Perhaps now might be a bad time, as I must ask you to exit the building at once, by the nearest available means."

"Those are the fire alarms, aren't they?"

"Well spotted, Captain. Please follow the lights to the stairwell, and-"

"Is that the Hulk? Where is everyone-"

"No one is injured or trapped at present. There is no need for rescue, merely evacuation. Captain, I really must insist that you-"

"All right, I'm going."

~*~

That was a stupid idea.

Once he gets a good look at the panic room during the cleanup, Steve realizes that. There are observation windows, monitors, cameras, cold white light letting not a single shadow bide, and he just… couldn't like that. Like an animal. A lion in a zoo. A lab rat. 

Alone in his icy shower, Steve shivers at the idea. He can't even imagine it, being watched while the heat he can feel coiling in his bones takes him apart, breaks him down, destroys what he's given up so much to become. It's bad enough now, deadpanning his way through briefings while trying not to show how every whiff of ranking on every living agent makes him think of how their teeth would feel in his shoulder, how their hands could mark his skin, how their flesh would feel inside him, even if they hadn't a knot to offer. He's seen other Oughts fall into breeding heats in unsecure places. The USO girls sometimes got triggered on the road, and so he's seen how the heat turned them helpless, shameless, stripped of anything that seemed like human dignity, just wanting, begging, for whatever touch they could get, from whomever was close enough to take them. 

Steve never did. The serum gave him enough control as an Ace that he didn't have to fall to rut when an omega went off on him, but he couldn't exactly stop anybody else from taking what was offered either, not with the poor Ought right there, naked, flushed, slick to the knees and pleading for relief. Not with a willing Deuce good and ready to help out, or a randy Ace het up and all set to fight Steve for her. He never stayed to watch like some others would, but with what the serum did to his ears, Steve couldn't exactly help hearing it sometimes.

So now he _can_ imagine it, going through that gross animal rut well lit and surrounded by glass. It makes his stomach turn to think of metal gurneys and leather straps and drains in a cold tile floor, and a broken voice repeating nine numbers into an empty room again and again and again, and good Lord, he just can't do it in a place like that. Just can't, not even if this heat really is worse than any he's ever lived through. 

There's got to be a better way. He'll find a better way, a better place to wait it out until he gets himself back under control. Not a hotel, where they'd recognize his face and the name on his credit card. Not an enclave, where he wouldn't even be admitted no matter what signs he showed, because _everyone knew_ Captain America's status, and it was _definitely not_ omega. Not a clinic with one of those damned filthy knotting machines they hinted at on TV late at night, but something. Something.

He's always been resourceful. He can figure this out. He's got time. At least a little time.

~*~

_Thursday_

"Captain Rogers, I am sorry to wake you, but there is a shipment for you at the delivery dock. The porters are adamant that you must sign for it personally."

"Oh. Yes, please tell them I'm on my way down right now."

"Of course, Captain Rogers. Will you require the use of loading equipment to bring the… delivery to your rooms?"

"Um… Yes on the loader please, Jarvis, but no. It's going somewhere else. Will it disturb anyone if I just put this downstairs for awhile? I mean, is there somewhere out of the way, maybe? Where it won't be bothered?"

"While finding an unobtrusive storage place for a shipping container is a challenge, I do believe I can provide one or two options, Captain. Might I ask if I am correctly intuiting a desire for secrecy on your part?"

"That's right, Jarvis. I'd rather not… discuss this with the team. If it won't go against your protocols to keep it to yourself, I'd consider it a great favor."

"I understand, Captain. However, if you require assistance with your pr-"

"I'll be fine, Jarvis. I mean, it'll be fine. I've got this."

"Of course, Captain."

~*~

Steve tells himself it's not paranoia, and is immediately amused -- because paranoia is exactly what's been his biggest clue that this will be a very bad heat. That this will be the worst one he's ever had. Steve knows that now, there's no denying it. Letting his control down for a week while he was lost, using his natural omega status to find his way back to civilization after the crash might have been necessary, but… but it's going to cost him dearly now.

A whole week. From the vantage of hindsight, it makes Steve grind his teeth in rage. A whole week with the omega in him off the leash, his borrowed alpha nature pushed down into silence, and what the hell did he expect, that the Ought would just go under again when he didn't need the nose, the instincts, the pack-sense to point him back to where he belonged? If that's what you can call it, belonging. His place on the team is established, but outside of combat, Steve's still just... outside, like he's been all his life. He's actually surprised, in his darker moments, that his omega nature oriented on the team at all while he was lost, and not on a long-closed SSR base in London, or a railroad bridge in Switzerland.

Since Steve's return to the City and to Stark Tower though, it hasn’t gone under for him once. Not once, even with the scent neutralizers in his soap and cologne, not with every icy shower he's put himself through, not with every attempt to channel the growing agitation into punching bags or imaginary Doombots or miles on the treadmill. It's going to happen, and the longer Steve waits, the longer he pretends it's all business as usual, the harder it is to be around his team.

Because he knows objectively, they're his -- his team, his squad, his unit -- the only 'pack' he's got now. But there is this thing inside him that can only see that _he_ is not _theirs_ , that _his_ pack, his own is not here to help him, and he just might claw his way out of his skin if he has to smell the others, to see them, to stand up and be looked at by them any longer. 

And in the night, when he wakes to find his clothes stripped off and the blankets flung away, his rear hiked obscenely into the air with slick drooling, as hot as blood down his aching prick and onto the bed between his knees... When he wakes with his face pressed into the pillows because even in his sleep he doesn't want to hear himself beg or scream or breathe... When the slightest hint of footsteps in the hallway outside his apartments brings him, panting, anxious and shamefaced out of those dreams, he bares his teeth to the darkness and shakes at the thought of what might happen once he can't hide it any longer. 

They have defeated armies, the Avengers together. They have fought Gods to the ground. What would the reluctance of one omega clearly in his season measure against an alpha as strong as the Hulk, or even Thor, who doesn't smell quite like a human alpha, but certainly acts like one. They'd only mean him well, he knows, and he might even say he wanted it, might even beg them for it if Clint, who smells like toast and comfort and gun oil, or Natasha, scentless as a child beneath her perfume, were the ones to find him first. Hell, he'd probably even beg Tony for it, knowing damned well how little another omega could do for him. But he won't want it. Not really. He's never wanted it, not even when there was an alpha on his back with a mouthful of his skinny neck, and he didn't stand a chance of fighting the dumb bastard off. 

And that's what really makes his belly clench in those moments – not _knowing_. He can't know what he'll do, not for sure. Steve's not the skinny Ought he was born any more, and the meta-alpha super soldier will still be there inside him, quick and agile and too powerful by half even when omega Steve is falling headlong into the first real heat he's had in his life. He doesn't know what will happen, but his dreams, the ones that haven't been full of rutting, have been full of running, hiding, and alternately biting, clawing, fighting for his life against… everyone. He's woken up on his feet and bolting for the door twice this week, and once he had a chair in his hands, already swinging at where his dream told him Natasha was hiding. 

Strength like his is a responsibility Steve has always taken seriously.

He trusts the serum. He trusts Erskine's genius. He just can't quite trust himself, that's all.

~*~

_Friday_

*Beep.* 

"Hi, Thor, it's Steve Rogers. I know you're going to be in New Mexico until tonight, but I wonder if you'd do a favor for me when you get back to the Tower? I've ordered some things -- um. Things I'd like to keep as a surprise from the rest of the team. They're in a large metal box down in the basement -- I drew a little map and put it under your door. I'm sure you'll see it right away. It's just... it's a big box, and you know how Tony gets when things are in his way, but I couldn't push it all the way against the wall before I needed to leave and take care of, um, some things. Could you possibly go down there when you get home, and just give it a shove into the corner so nobody will bother it? No need to mention it to anybody else -- it'll ruin the surprise if any of the team gets curious and goes snooping, you know? So. Um, thanks. I'll probably see you next week, when I get back. Thanks."

~*~

He smells Thor coming long before he hears him -- smells him butter and ozone and salt and tiny blue flowers in grass and wrong, wrong, not right at all. That's despite towels stuffed into every chink he could find; that's despite the camphor ice rubbed over his own skin so that his eyes water and he has to swallow each breath hard; that's despite everything he could think of to make it easier to sit still and not make a noise as the Other comes sniffing around his den.

His heart begins to race, and Steve turns his face into the pillow, reciting the Declaration of Independence under his breath so he won't give in to the urge to growl. Or whine.

Footsteps circle the container's two exposed sides, and Steve can hear Thor's voice in query, Jarvis' voice in answer. A part of him cringes, ready now to be discovered, to be dragged out of his den and forced to- 

No. That won't happen. He tells himself that firmly, silently, and then tells himself to believe it, and to stop shaking.

There are two echoing taps on the steel wall above Steve's head. He holds his breath, thinks of being invisible, silent, scentless as a newborn until he hears Thor groan, then the creaking of steel and a grinding shriek as the whole container jolts three feet along the concrete and clangs to a stop against the basement wall.

There. The door to his den is blocked now. Steve won't have the traction to open it, even if he should flip into a panic, or drop into rut-frenzy. And Jarvis… well, Jarvis is smart. He's figured it out by now, Steve's sure, and he's also got the ability to send robots with cutting torches and pry-clamp arms down here if he thinks it's necessary. But Steve trusts the AI not to do anything that would put Tony or the others at risk. Jarvis would never let Tony get hurt. Never. Jarvis is safe.

Steve listens to the footsteps leaving, waits for the Thorscent to clear from his tongue before he slips out of the nest to prowl his den one more time, checking. Water. Rations. Enough of both for twice as long as Steve thinks he'll need to stay hidden, though he can't imagine wanting food right now. Chemical toilet. Paper and pencil just in case he's lucky enough to be bored instead of sick with heat the whole time. Lights for when he can stand it. Pillows and thin, rough moving blankets on an old, second hand mattress nobody will miss when he has to throw it out later. Towels, clean and soft and as many as he could get in one go, because one thing he has to allow here is to remind himself that he's _not_ an animal, no matter what his confused throwback biology seems to think. Last is the incinerator unit; wildly expensive because it was small, clean burning and smokeless, and could handle anything but certain metals. 

He can do this. He's lived through worse. He's lived through the Ice -- a little heat will be nothing. He'll be fine.

Then he turns out the light and crawls back into his nest of cheap blankets and towels to shiver and sweat and wait.


	2. Equivocation

"Jarvis do we need to send out Search and Rescue for Rogers again?" Tony grumbles, looking up from his first e mail scan of the day -- well, technically of the three-day work jag he's been on, because who the hell has time for e mails when there were the laws of physics to seduce into compromising positions? Not him, that's who. 

"No sir, I do not believe that is necessary," Jarvis answers, and Tony smiles to hear the gurgle of the coffeemaker starting up. 

"Then why the hell does SHIELD seem to think he's gone missing again?" Tony scrolls down through the addresses and subject lines, flicking highlights at Steve's name over and over and over again. "I mean seriously, the guy's been a broody fucking bear for two weeks since they got him back from Nosepick Maine, but it's not like he's been hard to find." He waves a dismissive hand at the floor, beneath which lies the gym and the Captain's apartment, and sneers. "But suddenly I've got half the agent pool whining at me about Cap's missed this, and Cap's absent that, and Christ, this shit is three days deep! I _know_ SHIELD's better at finding their ass with both hands than this!"

"I believe the Captain might have missed his two week injury checkup on Saturday, Sir," Jarvis says. "And his call log seems to indicate rather more messages and missed calls in his inbox than usual. Perhaps he has not received his messages or calls due to having forgotten to plug in his phone or tablet." Tony chuckles at that, remembering the look on Fury's face when that little hole in Steve's education turned up to bite his leather clad ass in debriefing. Cause let's face it; outside of a car, batteries weren't really a thing in the 30's, let alone batteries you could plug into a wall and recharge.

The coffeemaker dings, and Tony kicks off his worktable hard, rolling his chair backward across the lab, cup in hand to partake of the benediction. "Well, if he's here, then tell the star spangled sonofabitch to call in and get Fury off my ass. Because his secretary I am _not_."

"Of course, sir."

Tony swaps the carafe out for his cup. "Not even in the kinky way, which he totally wouldn't even know to ask for, even if I liked him enough to do drag for him right now."

"No, sir, most likely not."

"Because Steve is totally not kinky. Whitebread, straightlaced alpha male all the way. Shove a lump of coal up his ass and he'll shit out a diamond, am I right?"

"As you say, sir."

Tony peers at his desktop with suspicion. "You're hiding something," he accuses. "You never agree with me this much unless you're hiding something."

"Incoming call from Dr. Banner sir," Jarvis answers just as Bruce's ringtone replaces Tony's lab-music with jangly Bollywood cheer.

"Hey Honey," Tony says with a grin as the biggest of his viewscreens fills up with an image of his face, wind-tousled, pink with chill and framed against gritty concrete. "You don't know where Steve's hiding out, do you?"

Bruce blinks, then cocks his head. "I was actually going to ask you that," he replies after a moment. "I had a shipment of lab glass come in this morning, and there's several crates down here in the loading dock that are addressed to him. They look like they've been here a few days, too."

"Right. Let me get back to you on that," Tony says, and cuts the call.

"You do know where he is, don't you Jarvis?"

There is a distinct hesitation before his A. I. answers, "I couldn't say, sir."

Tony rescues his full cup from the coffeemaker and slips the carafe back into place. "That is not a denial. Why don't you want to tell me where he is?"

"Because my analysis of the situation suggests that he intends his whereabouts to remain unknown."

"What, you work for Rogers now?"

The voice turns just a little chilly. "When the wishes and needs of this Tower's residents do not impinge upon my primary protocols, I frequently indulge the preferences of people other than yourself."

There's something about the phrasing that's off there. Jarvis is a prince of smooth evasions, and as the undisputed king thereof, Tony is definitely qualified to judge. But these seem almost clumsy, like he's not really sure of himself, but doesn't have enough data to redirect. Tony stands and cradles his too-hot mug against his arc-reactor housing while he considers.

"If I order you to tell me what's going on, you're going to lie, aren't you?"

"It... is not impossible, sir."

It's the open discomfort in Jarvis' tone that decides him. Tony has his phone out and is dialing at once. 

Thor says Steve's gone for the week, but doesn't know where he's gone, and hangs up before Tony can dig at him for whatever that weird note of childlike glee in his voice is all about. Natasha doesn't answer her phone at all, and Tony's call rolls to her voice mail after only one ring. Barton's the only one who seems to have a clue at all.

"Yeah, I know where he's at," Clint says when Tony calls him. Street traffic rattles in the air behind his voice, but Tony can't help thinking the agent sounds bit relieved underneath the talking-in-public grumble. "I figured you knew about it."

"Knew about what? Why would I know what Steve's been up to? I have a job, you know -- two jobs when there's evil to defeat, -- and anyhow, Steve's barely talked to anybody in two weeks, so why should I-"

Clint makes a sound that could be derision, or possibly just mucus. "Shit, Stark, no reason at all. He's just been denning in your goddamned basement since Saturday morning, after all."

Tony laughs so hard at that, he nearly drops his coffee. Barton hangs up on him in disgust, but when Tony calls Bruce back to share the archer's idea of a joke, it all starts to seem slightly less hilarious.

"A crate of _towels_?" Tony asks from the elevator.

"Two, actually," Bruce replies in that mildly baffled tone that Tony's come to recognize as worry. "The third crate's full of cases of Gatorade."

"Huh," he muses, then turns to the elevator's camera. "Jarvis, why didn't you deliver those crates to Steve's apartment?"

"The Captain did not prefer it."

The elevator doors open. "Yeah, well I prefer it. Get that shit up here right now."

"Tony," Bruce's voice carries a faint note of warning mixed into the reproach. "If Steve wants his privacy, you should leave him to it." Tony can understand Bruce's concern; as stealthy as the soft-spoken man's alpha status is, he's still Tony's alpha, and though they're not a bonded pair, he would be worried about his omega buddy walking into another alpha's territory.

Still, Tony's nothing if not good at getting his way, and status bedamned. "Nope," he sasses back. "There's a mystery here, and I'm gonna get to the bottom of it, so if you want to make sure Steve doesn't throw me through a wall, you'd better get up here yourself." He cuts the call then, knowing the next words out of Bruce's mouth will get him into real trouble when he ignores them, and figuring it's better for everyone if he never hears the order in the first place. Bruce will understand. Steve respects Bruce, always yanks up short when Bruce steps in and makes Tony quit poking the super soldier for a super reaction. Whatever alpha brooding is going on in Steve's big blond brain, Bruce will be able to get to the root of it.

So Tony's ready with the security override code when Bruce arrives, rumpled, out of breath, and gorgeously annoyed. "Tony, he could be in rut," Bruce says, grabbing his wrist too late.

"Pssht. He'd be picking fights with Thor if he was ruttish, not hiding in his rooms," Tony grins, turning to peck a kiss to his alpha's cheek. "Come on. You know something's wrong with our super-soldier. We owe it to world peace and the principles of science to figure out wha- whoa!" 

Tony reels in place as the door sweeps back and a sweet, desperate musk swirls out around him. His body surges with sympathy, stiffening in front and slicking up behind as the scent of a true breeding heat beckons Tony into the apartment in a daze. Everything's showroom neat, eerily anonymous, and smells of Steve... but no Steve Tony's ever met or imagined. The ghost of an absent omega lingers in the apartment's still air, all fear and confusion and sex and need and over it all such a thick, choking _loneliness_. 

Tony sucks the scent over his tongue and teeth, high and tight through his throat until his eyes water and sting with it, and he's nothing but sure; the heat-sick omega is Steve, and nobody else. It makes Tony's heart twist beneath the arc reactor to smell it, to look around the blank, orderly rooms, and to _taste_ the quiet desperation that the man's been hiding so fiercely all this time.

"Steve..." he murmurs, letting the scent draw him in toward the bedroom. "Jesus, baby, what did you do?" 

"Tony..." The rumble in Bruce's voice pulls him up short. Turning, Tony finds the brown eyes greened over, sharpening warily in response to the heat even his weak alpha nose can smell all around them. "I don't. He's... Someone's about to go into heat. If he's found an omega, then we shouldn't-"

"It's ok, Bruce," Tony breathes, struggling to force the words out past the sudden, overwhelming surge of sympathy. He catches up a pillow from the bed and presses it to his face, smelling the familiar, fiercely restrained alpha-Steve rubbed into its fibers, but now it's overlaid heavily with the same tragic musk that perfumes the apartment so clearly to Tony's sharper senses. "He's not here. Steve hasn't been here for days, right, Jarvis?" 

"No, sir, I'm afraid he has not." And Tony knows he isn't imagining the note of relief in Jarvis' immediate response.

~*~

It's not like getting injured. He's been injured. He knows how to ride that pain out, to breathe through it, outwait it, and come out the other side.

It's more like being sick with a bad fever. He'll never forget what that was like, clinging to sense and sanity, riding the swells of awful from lucidity to lucidity until you either got better or you went away for awhile. Maybe forever. (Sometimes, when it was bad, you hoped and hoped it would be forever.)

But the heat is worse still, because there are no swells, no calming dips between fever spikes. There is only the build, steady and dizzying and terrifying; the want long since twisted into a cramping ache, the crazy itch clawed down through his guts till its deeper than bone, and he can't imagine anything being able to scratch it. The sensitivity of his skin adds to the tension, because Steve can't bear the touch of clothes, or the cheap, rough blankets. He's pathetically grateful for the softness of the towels he is soaking with slick and precome, sweat and snot and tears at a rather frightening rate. 

He wishes he were delirious. He wishes he could bear to jerk off again, but after that first agonizing attempt to relieve the aching pressure in his dick, he doesn't quite dare. The swelling of his knot during ejaculation had hurt so much he'd blacked out for a few moments, and when he'd recovered enough to look down, panting with pain and panic, he'd expected to see blood rather than semen on his wet belly. And the deep-seated, aching hunger hadn't abated much at all, despite the brief, painful release. So knotting was a bad idea. A terrible idea. Off the list. No self abuse. He can understand that, conceptually. He just wished his hard, twitching, leaking cock could be made to pay attention to the orders, because he's beginning to be afraid it'll go septic from lack of blood flow if it stays hard much longer.

At one point, embarrassingly early on, Steve had bitten himself bloody trying to keep quiet. Foolishly clinging to a dignity nobody would witness, but when has he not been stubborn? The meat of his left forearm is still sore from it, and his throat tastes of blood and despair now, but for a little while it almost cleared his head. 

That hadn't been a mercy. The heat didn't ease with the lifting of the fog, if anything, it clenched down tighter, making him more aware of how his heart thunders, how the tension unrelieved coils up around his chest until he can barely breathe for it, how his marrow aches with exhaustion, how he can tell the heat isn't even halfway through with him. He has days of this left to go.

He'd been glad of the delirium when it came back, and somewhat as well for the smell of blood mixed with heat-slick on the bed beneath him. Scent memory is his only rescue here, his only comfort, as the acrid smells of blood and steel and sweat and fear blur the icy years, the exhausted ache in his bones become nothing more than the grind of a five day march, and the panting chuffs of his breath in the closed, chill darkness take on the meter of creaking boots in cold German mud...

~*~

"What..." The word cracked coming out of Bucky's throat, like Steve's name had done just hours before -- baffled, a little shocked, brittle from miles of stubborn silence. And like before, Steve tried, and failed to hide his relief to finally hear his best friend's voice again. Bucky licked his lips, scowling a glance Steve's way, and then tried again. "What the hell happened to you, Punk?"

"Told you," he said, knowing he shouldn't enjoy Buck's confusion so much. "I joined the-"

Bucky spared a moment's grip on his stolen rifle to whack at Steve's shoulder. "No, I don't mean all..." he waved that hand up and down the body that Steve still wasn't quite used to. "All that. I mean," Bucky licked his lips, looked around in a way Steve remembered from their orphanage years as the 'who's close enough to hear' maneuver. But Steve had put them at midpoint in the column -- behind the eager point guard in their thrill-ride stolen tank, and the relieved, but battered wounded with all the trucks they'd been able to get started in the ruins of the base. He had wanted to be in range to respond just in case either end of the escapee mob was attacked, but the result was a thirty foot gap around Steve and Bucky, and the sheltering rumble of engines to bury their words from all but each other.

Bucky leaned a little closer, spoke a little quieter all the same. "Look, I know you, Steve. Shared a room with you since we were what, eleven? I know your scent like I know my own; sick, healthy, hot and cool, and even drunk as a skunk, but when I was-" he swallowed, hard and sudden, the way sick could come up on you when you weren't expecting it. He shook it off before Steve could open his mouth though, and pushed onward with a glare. "When you found me back there, _I did not recognize you_."

It didn't hurt, hearing that. Not really. He'd expected it, after all. "Course. Never thought I'd get over here, did you?" Bucky hit his arm again, knuckles first this time, and hard enough to sting.

"No, you dumb punk, you're not listening," he growled. "I thought you were some HYDRA Ace, Steve, come in to try your luck while that Ought doctor wasn't around. I thought," he licked his lips, confusion on him almost as thick as the lingering scent of that twisted laboratory as he gripped at Steve's elbow and whispered, "I thought you were an alpha, Steve." 

And it had been guilt twisting in his guts then, hadn't it? Guilt and just a little bit of fear too, because hadn't this loyal, ferocious beta fought for him at every turn, even when it was useless and to no gain? Hadn't Buck always seemed like the last one in the world who'd care? Still, the fear helped, gave Steve something to brace himself against, stand up to, and stare in the eye with his jaw fixed and his courage in both clenched fists. 

He took a deep breath of the air that smelled of mud and blood, pine and steel, and let the truth out as squarely as he could over the clanking grind of tank treads and engine gears. "I am an alpha now, Bucky. Sort of."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look for Chapter 3 on Monday, my poison dart flowers. Till then, enjoy the whump.  
> Thanks to everyone who commented and kudoed the work. You guys really know how to keep a writer motivated!


	3. Theory and Proof

"I can't believe it," Bruce says again, rocking on his toes in an effort not to pace. His nose isn't as sensitive or discerning as an omega's, but the heat-scent of Steve's apartment is impossible to miss. It makes his skin tight and his bones restless, and he had to consciously keep himself from tasting the air over his tongue, because this is _not_ a good time to let himself drift into a competitive rut. But the heat smell is so beguiling, so _hungry_ , and it would be so, so easy to let himself rise to it, to comfort, to claim, or to conquer whoever stood in his way. 

Instead, he shakes his head again, and repeats himself over whatever equivocations Tony's been babbling at him now. "I can't believe it, Tony. I don't care what kind of soap and deodorant he's using, what you're saying makes no sense! If Steve's an omega, then he hasn't gone into even a sympathy heat once since we all moved into this tower. Not even that time when Dr. Foster's friend Darcy came to visit Thor, and you, Pepper and Clint all triggered off her heat."

"Suppressants can do that, Bruce," Tony wheedles, still clutching Steve's pillow. "I know omegas who have gone decades without a single heat, and-"

"AND I've seen Steve's bloodwork, Tony! Hell, I've _run_ some of those tests, and suppressants would have shown up dozens of times by now if he was using them." He sets his teeth, and forces his shoulders to relax, forces himself not to rise to Tony's beseeching gaze. Whatever prank or game the omega has in mind, Bruce isn't going to let it play through -- not against another, superpowered alpha, especially one sequestered with his omega. Not against a _friend_. "Whatever's going on, we need to stay clear of it."

"You're wrong." Maybe Tony hears the limit of Bruce's patience approaching in his voice, and maybe he doesn't. His own tone slides from the wheedling, nagging patter of his manic side straight down into its own kind of warning. "We need to help him, Bruce. He doesn't have anybody else."

"That's enough," Bruce growls and reaches for Tony's shoulder, meaning to scruff the brat and haul him bodily out of Steve's territory if necessary. 

Tony skips out of reach with a slithering wriggle that puts Steve's sofa between them, pushing his palm out toward Bruce as the phone in his pocket crows like a rooster. He has it on and set to speaker before Bruce closes two steps toward him. "Barton, what is it now?" he asks, backing away from Bruce's advance until he hits the windows with his shoulders.

"All right look, Stark," Clint says without preamble, his voice echoing and vast with space, but taut with nerves as well. "I know you bust on Steve like it's in your job description, but I can't ignore this. If you're not gonna do something about this, I'm gonna have to call Fury."

"About what, exactly?" Tony asks, turning his face aside as Bruce crowds him into the glass. The question is clearly not for Tony's own benefit.

"Jesus Christ, are you really gonna be that fucking petty?" The raw horror in Clint's voice mingles liberally with disgust, and snags Bruce's attention away from the enticing show of submission before him.

"What are you talking about, Clint?" he asks, plucking the phone from Tony's hand when what he really wants to do is put his teeth to Tony's throat and shake him. He knows the growl behind his voice will put the beta on edge, but thanks to Tony's antics and the heady scent of omega in the apartment, Bruce is past the point of suppressing it. "What's petty?"

Clint gives a growl of his own. "You know what? Fuck it," he says over the clamoring echoes of whatever space he's in. "I'll get him out myself. Tony, tell Jarvis and these bots down here to help me, so you two can just stay up there and play doctor."

"Jarvis, where is-" Tony begins, before the AI cuts him off.

"I'm afraid I cannot comply, Agent Barton," Jarvis says, the only cool tone to be heard on the line. "Due to your beta status, and the Captain's condition, the odds of severe injury to either you or to him are beyond the limits of my allowable risk protocols."

"And what exactly _is_ the Captain's condition, Jarvis?" Bruce asks.

It's the hesitation that drives it home, that punctures the denial and throws the challenge of pure logic at Bruce's feet. Even riled and horny, he can't ignore it, nor the calm disdain in the AI's voice as he finally replies. "Given the circumstances, I believe you might better come down to sub basement three and see for yourself."

Then the elevator dings open, far more loudly than it has any reason to do. Tony eases up to Bruce's side, herding him unsubtly toward it while on the other end of the echoing phone line, Clint sneers, "Fucking finally!" and cuts the call, leaving the dead air echoing with what had sounded strangely like some kind of trapped or wounded animal wailing for release.

Unnerved, Bruce makes no further protests as Tony leads him away.

~*~

"I am an alpha now, Bucky," he said. "Sort of."

The wind shifted briefly, carried the scent of a nosy, familiar beta through the thick haze of mud and sweat and camphor. Bucky snarled a little, though his eyes stayed locked on Steve's face as he challenged, "Sort of."

Steve had to quell the urge to rub at his neck. Instead, he spotted Clint, out of place and time in the crowd of soldiers behind them, and gave the archer a show of teeth savage enough to make him drop his too-keen stare and melt away into the milling, half-remembered faces without a word. And by then he thought he'd found the words to maybe explain things to Bucky. Maybe.

"Look," he said, catching Bucky's eyes again. "I told you that Project Rebirth changed my genetic code to do all this to me. Is it so hard to believe that the serum could change my organs around while it was changing my bones and muscles too? I really am an alpha now."

Bucky looked around again, fox-canny, then he stumbled straight into Steve, clinging close when Steve caught him against his side. His nose was a press of cold against Steve's collarbone as his jacket gaped and Bucky snorted an open-mouthed sniff against the sweaty skin beneath it. Then he pushed upright again, shaking his head like he was shedding a dizzy spell. 

Steve kept a hand knotted in his sweater for a few seconds longer than strictly necessary, just to help the illusion along. He let go when Bucky shrugged against his hold and murmured, "No you're not." Then he flashed a glance Steve's way that was an equal mix of worried, baffled, and strangely, angry. "But you don't smell like an omega anymore either, and I can't rank you right in my head."

"Not supposed to," Steve replied, unwilling to lie to his best friend, even if the information was classified. "Not unless I want you to. It's easier to pass for a null that way."

Bucky's eyebrows went up, and he flicked a disbelieving glance along Steve's new, improved body. "A null? Really?"

He nodded, paraphrasing what Peggy had told him about why nulls, rare as they were, always got bumped up to field unit command when the brass could possibly manage it. "Alphas don't get territorial around me, betas don't get pushy, and omegas don't get... hot." He felt himself blush, but hoped the darkness would cover it. "They all can take orders from me without the damn glands getting in the way. That's what the Army thought they were getting; a superpowered null, who wouldn't mess up the rankings. That's why they signed off on the project. Dr Erskine told them he fixed me, and then he really did."

"You weren't broken!" Bucky seized his elbow, the venom in his snarl startling a flinch out of Steve before his own anger, long-banked, flared up in response.

"I was, Bucky," he said, shaking roughly free. "I was useless!"

"No you weren't! You were-"

"Too weak to work," Steve said through his teeth, feeling the words rumbling like a threat in his chest. "Too weak to fight, too weak to breathe, too weak to even _breed._ I was waste of skin, Bucky, just a mouth, using up food that better men could have been eating!"

Bucky grabbed him then, dragged him right off the road and up into the trees without a word or a look for the querying shouts of the soldiers behind. Steve could have broken his hold again, could even have dragged Bucky back into the column and kept him there, but that wasn't how they worked, the pair of them. Bucky said where, and often when, and Steve said a lot of things, but usually 'okay' was in there somewhere, and then they went. And so Steve went, waving the column onward with a reassuring nod for the worried faces that tracked their progress up the slope and into the pines.

When he ran out of steam, Bucky turned on Steve with a show of teeth and a voice so tight it sounded strangled. "There's no such thing as a better man than you, Steven Rogers," he said, visibly shaking, scenting of rage and sorrow through the prison filth that still covered him. "Never in your life! When we aged out of the Sacred Heart, who kept us fed, and never stole a scrap from anybody?" Bucky poked him in the shoulder, hard enough to rock Steve on his heels a little. "You did! Who found us a place right in the middle of the Barclay gang's patch and never carried a package or took a quiet dime for nothin?" Another poke. "Who went down three flights and tried to stand up for a hooker getting roughed even when he had a fever, and his nose was busted up already?" Another poke, but this one Steve fended away, only getting a poke to the other arm for his troubles. "You did, Steve. Only you!"

"Fat lot of good any of that did, too," Steve sighed, scanning the ridge and the road for enemies while he had the vantage for it. "We still barely ate, nearly froze in the winter, and I still got the stuffing knocked out of me whenever you weren't around." Bucky opened his mouth to argue, but Steve was done. The procedure was done. There was no going back anyhow, and he was glad of it. "Bucky, it's better this way," he said in that pleading voice that always worked to soften Bucky up. "I can finally DO something now -- something worthwhile. My life can mean something now that-"

Bucky poked him again, this time pushing right up into Steve's face to snarl words he clearly wanted to shout. "Your life. Has _always_ meant something, Steve Rogers! Always! Don't you _ever_ say..." Steve dropped his rifle, caught both of Bucky's hands to stop the assault, stop the rising volume, stop the frantic, fearful rage he could see building in those familiar grey eyes. Then Steve held on when Bucky sagged, panting and shaking against his chest, curling his arms around to keep Bucky's hands pinned between them, palms flat to his jacket like when they used to count Steve's breaths together in the New York tenement cold. 

"Jesus, Steve," he managed after a moment, turning up a pleading stare. "Was it so bad being omega? Really? I mean, you could make _life_ , when all the rest of us betas, nulls, and alphas can do is take it away."

Steve shook his head, not yet ready to let go, not yet ready to examine why. "First breath of cold air, my asthma would have killed me and the baby both, Bucky," he sighed, the ragged sweater catching against his callused hands as he rubbed circles between his friend's too-thin, winging shoulders. "Assuming a seed would even take with me so anemic all the time. And remember when I had the Rheumatic Fever? My temperature got so high the hospital told you I was a goner and wouldn't even take me in?" 

Bucky squirmed, and Steve reluctantly let up his hold, but all the shorter man did was slip his arms down to rest on Steve's ammo belt. "You got through it," he said, leaning close again. "You were always stronger than-"

" _You_ got me through it," Steve countered with the hard truth he'd known, but hidden for years. "But didn't you ever think it was weird how after that, I never heated up but once or twice a year, and even then it was weak, and all over in a day?"

"Steve, you were living with a Deuce!" Bucky pulled abruptly away, flinging his arms wide. Steve shivered at the cold where he'd just been. "You barely saw anybody else but me most days -- we shared a bed, for Christ's sake! Of _course_ I couldn't trigger you right, but that didn't mean an Ace wouldn't have-"

"I didn't want to be triggered by an Ace, Bucky!" The words were crushing out of him before Steve had even thought of speaking. He was helpless to dam them up, or to choke them back; it was all he could do to whisper them instead of scream. "I didn't want to triggered by anybody. I didn't want to be bred, and mounted and shut into a soft room and forgotten until I had no more little alpha-babies left to give!" He drew a shaking breath, closed his eyes and reminded himself it was over now. The serum had _fixed_ it. "I didn't want to be someone's livestock."

The forest was returning to quiet as the column retreated. The engines were a hum, but the grind of feet, the grunts and creaks of marching bodies had faded away, and the birds were beginning to wonder aloud at the change. Bucky's voice was a small, hurt thing in that looming almost-silence. "Did you think I would let that happen to you, Steve? Did you think I'd let anybody treat you like that?"

They were going to have to get moving soon. Up and over the ridge, down the other side to catch the road where it curved around, hook back up with the column before they got left behind. Steve shook his head, shouldered his rifle and started to climb. "I thought you weren't coming back," he said to the sound of Bucky's boots in the pine straw behind him. "I... I kept having dreams about you dead in a foxhole, or ground up under a tank's wheels, or in some damned Nazi pit like where I actually found you, and I..." Steve had to shake his head then, had to steal a glance back over his shoulder and make sure the pale, stubborn face was still there, hadn't fallen away into nightmares and shadow while he wasn't looking. 

It hadn't. Bucky was still right on his heels, and his glare forced out the rest of the words Steve had considered not saying. "There wouldn't be anybody then," he confessed. "I'd be alone, and the first Ace with low enough standards who came along would..."

Bucky snorted then, a sound so thick with scorn it startled a set of quail out of the brush nearby. "Woulda learned what a vicious little cuss Steve Rogers actually was the first time he put a hand to you and you bit it clean off, is what," Bucky sneered, coming up around a tree to take up Steve's left side. "Shit, Punk, you weren't ever big, but you were never helpless either. You and me both know that."

"Yeah..." The words were ash in his mouth, ash and smoke trickling past his intended silence to taint the mountain air with bitterness. "Yeah, well, it only takes once, doesn't it?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little early on this posting, but I had the time, so what the hell. Thanks for the kudos and comments, my deadly nightshades -- such motivation is beyond the price of rubies.


	4. What They've Done To My Song

~* Chapter 4: What They've Done To My Song *~

It's a shipping container. That's the appalling part. A used shipping container just fifteen feet long, and not quite tall enough to reach the steam pipes; sun bleached, filthy, and weather scarred, the logo on the side sheeted over with rusty stains that make it all but illegible. It reeks of poverty, desperation, grease, sex and pain, and just the sight of it behind the array of robots Jarvis moved into the basement makes Tony's throat close up tight around a distressed whine.

Steve's in there. Steve's in there _alone_ , and in _pain_ , and Tony can't stand it!

"Three days ago," Barton says from beside the door as Tony leads Bruce into the cavernous basement. "I couldn't sleep. Was wandering around down here, and I heard a noise." He points at long, ruddy scrapes against the concrete floor, where someone with more strength than good sense had shoved it hard into the corner and blocked the fucking door from all reach. "Heat smell wasn't quite so strong then, but it was enough." He slides a glance at Bruce and his scowl deepens just a bit. "Thought you two, out of everyone, wouldn't miss it."

"Air's filtered," Tony manages, watching Bruce sample the redolent air over his tongue, eyes dilated and bright. "Scrubbers clear it out so people can work in the building. And the labs get double filtration, so..."

"So Steve can disappear into a hole without anybody realizing it until-"

"You're the one who found him! Why didn't you tell anybody?" Tony bites out, hurting, angry.

"Couldn't imagine nobody fucking knew!" Clint waves a hand at the rusting crate, his face a twist of disgust. "You're the omega, Stark! You've got the best nose of any of us, and he got that in here right under it!"

A low sound, pained and exhausted, echoes against steel walls. It cuts through the rising squabble like a laser through butter, and it drags Tony's fraying attention back to the suffering omega he's been yearning toward since his first whiff of Steve's apartment. 

It drags at Bruce too, who looks almost surprised to find himself striding through the circle of robots stationed around the container. He looks even more surprised when one of them – a cutting unit from the fabrication shop, turns on him and snaps a torch alight in what can't be anything but a threat.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," Jarvis says, not sounding particularly sorry at all. "This is a complex situation. I cannot allow your interference without-"

"He is hurt in there," Bruce rumbles, all alpha now, and rousing fast with an omega in need, but out of reach. "Someone needs to help him!"

"Your assessment is not precisely accurate, however-"

Another cry, this one higher, louder, longer. It rises, dies, and then returns as a roar. And then something hits the container's wall so hard that the entire thing rocks on its treads. Tony scrambles to drag Bruce away; Clint on the startled alpha's other side. Bruce is greenish around the ears and fingertips by the time they get him back to the doorway, and Tony shoves Clint away, rubbing his hands hard into his armpits to stimulate his own scent glands. 

"Shh, Bruce," he says, stroking Bruce's hair out of his eyes with fingers that smell of home, and him, and comfort, and an omega that's perfectly safe and right here at hand. Not bonded, perhaps, but at least familiar, at least under no threat. "Shh. It's all right. We'll get him out, but let Jarvis tell us how, ok? So we don't hurt him?" That's dirty pool right there, even more so than using his own scent to overcome Steve's had been, but if it'll turn Bruce's protective instincts to their cause, Tony will play it without remorse. "Let me talk to him first. Calm him down. He won't be scared of me."

Barton makes an incredulous noise, no doubt thinking of how often Tony and Steve wind up shouting at each other in any given week. Tony flips him the bird without a glance. This is different. This is so very, very different.

Bruce closes his eyes, tucks his nose into the crook of Tony's shoulder, and sucks in a huge, shaking breath. His hands are warm and solid across the small of Tony's back, but they press carefully, precisely, desperately aware of how much harder he wants to grab, but won't. "Jarvis," he says into Tony's shirt, "You have the tools to cut that container open safely, am I right?"

"You are correct, Doctor. However I cannot guarantee that the Captain's reaction to finding any of you here will not be a violent one." Jarvis' voice is modulated now, smooth and soothing, modeled off Tony's. It's just loud enough to almost cover the whine of servos from the robots by the crate. Tony doesn't look back, not wanting to set Bruce off again, but he's pretty sure they've begun working on an access hole into the makeshift den. 

"Jarvis, can we pump a sedative in there?" Clint asks as the glow from an acetylene torch lights up the wall behind Bruce's head, sparks hissing and bouncing unseen on the floor. "If you make a small hole first, can we just drug him and get him out that way?"

"The Captain's metabolism and immunity to nearly all intoxicants makes drugging him a difficult proposition, Agent Barton," Jarvis says. "Factoring in the unknown quantity of his hormonal state at present, it might not be possible to render him unconscious that way.

That's when Bruce lifts his head and gives a sigh. "No, but you can get him woozy and sleepy," he says, the biologist back in his voice now that the alpha's been calmed. "That should let Tony get close enough to calm him down in person."

Relief floods Tony's skin, realizing he's not going to have to beg, wheedle, or lie to get what he and Steve both need – gentling time face to face, a chance to soothe, to comfort, to hold the omega whose nightmare heat is battering at him like a storm, and to try to make it better. He hadn't thought an alpha would realize how badly he'd need that, had thought Bruce was going to order him away, push him out of the room while he... 

The box gives another clang, but this time the scream from inside it is nothing more than a scream. Desperation and want and fear and helplessness, and Tony can't shut down the whine that rises into his own throat in answer. Bruce's hands curl tighter over his waist as the cutting torch resumes, but Tony can tell the alpha's attention has shifted Clint's way.

"I have an agent in my lab that will work," he says, "It's a variant of the gas you use on the Hulk in the field, but more dilute, and tailored to Steve's blood chemistry. I developed it in case we ever needed to do any kind of surgery on him," he answers Tony's shocked look without taking his eyes off Clint. "The serum's healing speed is nice, but not if it seals a bullet inside him, right?"

"And you want me to go get it," Clint's voice is skepticism itself. "From your _lab_. Where you told me never to set foot under pain of the Hulk dropping me on my head at high velocity."

"Yes please," Bruce sighs, turning his face back into Tony's neck. 

"Just checking," Clint replies, kicking off the wall with a sigh. "You've got that on record, right, Jarvis? So he can't forget later and kill me?"

"You don't get going, _I'll_ kill you, Barton." Tony says, only half joking. He wants this moment with Bruce before that crate comes open, and whatever mess Cap's put himself into becomes their problem, wants just a little while to lean into his alpha friend and reassure them both without the snarky beta standing by to watch.

Barton grins, but another groan, and a falling thump from inside the crate puts an end to the bickering. Clint's eyes flick up toward the container as the cutting flame winks out and the robot's arm retracts with a whine. Tony finds himself turning in Bruce's arms to follow that gaze. The scent of Steve's heat rolls out thicker now that the container's breached, slinking under the fume of molten metal and burning gas to twine around Tony's ribs and brain and cock at once. But it's the sound that crushes the breath right out of him – soft, rhythmic, desperate, -- if Tony closes his eyes and thinks about the faint thuds, whispering rustles, the shallow, panting breaths, he'd picture a small boy, curled up tight in the darkness and rocking where he sits, perhaps not caring that he hits the wall again and again and again as he does.

But this isn't a small boy, this is Steve, and Steve is Captain goddamned America, and he doesn't, he just fucking _doesn't_ hide like this, all alone and trapped with his own misery. Tony wriggles loose of Bruce's grasp, aching as he slips between the ranks of bots to press his hands against the steel bulkhead, still hot from the brand new breathing hole cut into its side. "Steve," he says, and lays his cheek against the warm steel. "Steve, we're here..."

The rhythmic sounds stop. Cut off like a tripped switch; no breath, no movement, nothing.

"Steve?" he tries again.

"Tony?" God, but that reply is a tiny, weary thing.

"That's me, hey?" Tony puts more of a smile than he feels into the words. "Gonna get you out of there, buddy. Gonna make you all-"

"Tony, please," Steve cuts him off, and if his voice wasn't trembling and thin in his throat, he might almost sound a bit like Captain America. But only a tiny little bit. "Please go away."

He hears Clint leave the room, smells Bruce following him out. Then it's just them, just Tony and Steve, and the horrible idea rusting between them. Tony slides to his knees beside the crate, one palm gritty with rust and sweat and flaking paint, his other hand already rubbing at his throat, releasing more of his own scent into the air as he whispers. "Shhh, it'll be okay Steve. It'll all be fine, I promise..."

~*~

"Please go away," he says to the ghost of his future, to the icy proof of just how badly he doesn't belong here, now, like this; to the last person in the world he can bear to look in the face in this state he's in. Humiliation burns him as deeply as want, and it's all Steve can do to keep from screaming it, pounding it into the steel wall with his fists until the heckling, mocking now slinks away and leaves him in peace with his then.

But instead, he's crying, shivering and tight-knotted around the only pillow he hasn't torn to shreds, and praying he can manage to stifle the traitorous words clamoring around his brain like panicked birds. Because he _doesn't_ want Tony to come in and hold him, to help him stop hurting, to show him how to swim this flood without drowning, he just _doesn't_. He mustn't want it. He's still too strong, too dangerous. Even heat-weak and shaking, he dented the steel wall when Bruce's alpha-smell, all citrus, smoke and bitter green weeds startled him out of sleep just now. His hand still aches, blood trickling over his split knuckles, and Tony's too damned fragile, for all his sass and fire, and Bruce is a friend, and they're a pair, and Steve couldn't put himself between them like this, he couldn't. He can't. Not even if he wanted to, and he wants to so much, so much, but no he doesn't. He's never wanted that. Never.

It's all right anyhow, he's okay, he can do this. He can.

So Steve buries those words in a welter of feathers and blue stripe ticking, ignores the ache in his chest as air thins and goes sour in his mouth. He huddles against the smell of rust, pitch and mud, crumbling paint and his own hollow sweating funk, and waits for Bucky to outstrip Tony and catch up to him in the cold Austrian night. It doesn't take long – Tony can't march a mile without his fancy metal suit, but Bucky can go thirty solid through freezing woods in stolen boots and still grin like Puck himself come the end of it.

Bucky wasn't grinning back then though. He was grinding his teeth in the moonstruck darkness, his eyes wide and black, and Steve didn't see the fury in them until he'd already opened his big, dumb mouth. "Yeah... well, it only takes once, doesn't it?"

Bucky stopped short, ignoring how Steve hung up too, holding the pine branch he'd pushed out of their way. Bucky stared at him with his jaw working on silent rage as he added two and two and came up with four. Buck had always been a quick one with math. "Steve?" he managed after forever, his voice a growl in his chest.

Steve sighed, shook his head and let the branch ease back between them. Bucky ducked under it, snagging Steve's elbow in a grip that once would have all but yanked him off his feet. "Steve, who?"

"Bucky, don't-" he didn't shake Bucky's hand off, but used his now-greater mass to drag his friend back into motion instead. "We don't have time for this right now."

Bucky scrambled down the slope and around to block Steve's path, pushing the rifle across Steve's torn and singed jacket like it was the only warning he was going to give. "Tell. Me," he panted, the words puffing white and furious between them. "Tell me who! Because if he isn't dead already, I swear I will-"

"He didn't!" Steve bit his lip as his too-loud words split the darkness, echoed back off unseen hills. They both held their breaths, peering, listening, waiting for some sign of danger, but there was only the rustle of wind in the pines, and the murmur of an owl farther up the ridgeline. Steve gave a nod toward the distant road, a moonlit gleam just visible through the tangle of pines, and when Bucky grudgingly nodded, he stepped around and continued his descent, with a murmur of, "He didn't, okay?"

"But he tried to," Bucky said after a long, dense silence. "And you weren't the one who stopped him, either." Steve groaned, wiped at his tired eyes, and had to stifle a flinch as Bucky's hand took hold of his elbow again, gently this time. "Steve. Look at me," he pleaded, pushing into Steve's way again, and grabbing his jacket collar so tight the leather squeaked. "Look at me and tell me the name of the alpha I'm gonna kill."

Steve closed his eyes, knowing that look too well to even try and dodge Bucky's question now. No alpha who crossed their path would be safe until Bucky had his answer, and not even MPs would be able to hold him back, and Steve hadn't gone through all this just to lose Bucky to a Court Martial and dishonorable discharge. "Gil Hodge was his name," Steve sighed. "I showed him up in basic a couple of times. Didn't mean to, but just cause a fella's an Ace don't make him smart." He offered Bucky a shrug and a grin to try and show him just how unimportant the whole thing was. "He took it bad when the Doc chose me for Project Rebirth over him."

Bucky searched his face for a lie, and Steve let him see the truth. It had been scary in the moment, yes, but it was done now, past and over, and all behind him now that he could punch his way out of a tank if he had to. Bucky didn't look convinced, but he slid out of Steve's way all the same, and paced him down the hill in a thoughtful silence that got thicker as they descended. 

Even knowing it was coming, Steve still flinched when Bucky broke that silence at last. "Was," he said, falsely casual. "You said that _was_ his name. He dead now?"

Steve sighed and scratched at his neck, where sweat had made the stiff wool of his stage uniform rub like sandpaper. "Bucky, does it matter?" he pleaded. "Hodge was just another damned Ace meathead like a dozen we knew back in Brooklyn. He tried it on, I fought back, the MPs heard, and they stopped him. That's all that's really impor -

"Is. He. Dead. Now?" Bucky didn't try to stop him this time, just fired those words like bullets across the night between them.

There was a part of him, a mean, crude little part that Steve wasn't proud of, that was almost relieved to answer. "Yeah. I'm pretty sure he is. I think Agent Carter probably killed him. She was kind of ... imprinting me during training. That's why nobody else tried it out, I guess."

"She?" Bucky's startled grin was a flash of stark white in the gloom. "You're telling me a _dame_ imprinted you, and then killed an army recruit, who happened to be an Ace, _during training?!_ "

Steve shrugged, hardly knowing where to begin unpacking the story. "Peggy's an alpha too, Buck," he tried, hoping the simple answer would be enough.

"Nuts!"

Then he had to laugh, because what other reaction could he have expected? It was incredible, after all -- impossible. Just like a sickly, pipsqueak omega going into a box and coming out of it a muscle bound meta-alpha was impossible. "She is though," he grinned. "The Doc fixed her too."

"Jesus Christ," Bucky swore after a long minute. "What in the world does a dame want being an Ace? She couldn't even sire... Could she? I mean, does she have a prick now or something?"

"Geez, Bucky, I don't know what she's got, and I don't care! Doesn't much matter if she just doesn't want to carry," Steve cut off the conjecture as quickly as he could, not wanting to have to face Peggy with the memory of it on his face. "And the ... um... imprinting mostly happened because she was keeping all the other recruits off me during training. We spent a lot of time together."

Bucky gave him a knowing smirk. "Uh huh. That's what happened."

"Bucky..."

The low, knowing chuckle he got in reply burned along the back of Steve's neck. "So she's a looker then?" he poked, all sly insinuation that only made everything worse.

"Agent Carter reads as neuter unless she's mad, just like me," Steve tried, knowing that he was only explaining himself into a hole, but driven, out of respect for the woman, to at least try and set Bucky straight on this. "She never triggered me to heat. In fact, being around her helped keep me cool even when betas and other omegas in the squad would heat up and go off. She... it was comfortable. First time I felt like that around a dame."

"Sounds like love to me," Bucky said, something brittle underneath the teasing. "You sure you didn't imprint a little yourself?"

Steve, who hadn't been sure of anything of the kind, gave a shrug, and offered up the best truth he had to that. "She wouldn't want me anyhow."

"Then she's stupid." And suddenly the teasing was gone, buried under a leaden growl.

Steve turned too quickly, skidding in the thick, soft pine thatch as he caught for Bucky's arm in his turn. "No, I mean..." he let go of Bucky's sweater, suddenly wary of his strength, and aware of how long his friend had been walking, of how recently he'd been raving and helpless on that HYDRA table. But he couldn't let it hang like that, couldn't let Bucky take a grudge against Peggy and prop it on something that wasn't even true. "I mean she wouldn't want me now that I can knot and sire," he explained. "You know how hard dames have it on their own even back home, Buck. She's worked so hard to get where she is, and she's twice the officer any Ace could be. Getting tied, bonded and bred would only ruin it all for her."

Bucky huffed, acknowledging the point. Omegas and dames had the same lot when the question of children came up. Soldiers would break orders, ruin battle plans, and get themselves and their squadmates killed or captured trying to protect and shield somebody who smelled pregnant, even if the get wasn't their own. Let the child's sire, whether enlisted man or officer, be standing anywhere nearby its dam when the bullets flew, and an organized, well-trained squad could be just half a step from a pack brawl that would end in mutiny charges all 'round. The Army couldn't afford that kind of a disruptive force on a good day, so while command was willing to take them on to build up numbers, let one of them fall pregnant, and they were long gone.

"She might have wanted to back when we were both... back before," Steve said, a little wistful as he nodded down at the body he still hadn't quite gotten used to. "But not like this."

Bucky stared at him again, evaluating, clearly deciding something in his unruly head. Then he hawked and spat. "Still say she's stupid," he said, eyes full of dare even as he shrugged like he didn't care. "Either that, or she never heard of a rubber." 

Steve sighed, but let him go. A beta wouldn't understand what it was like, how hard it was to hold onto power when everybody knew that your own body could take it away from you with one strong heat. When everybody knew that all it took to reduce you to nothing was a few chemicals and a particular time of year. Even alphas, who fell into ruts of their own once or twice a year, didn't know what that covetous, leering glint felt like when it slid over you with a mean smile underneath it. That smile that said, 'yeah, I could have you, Ought. I could have you easy; all I got to do is wait.' That smile that made you feel like a _thing_ , not a person.

"Can't blame her for wanting to have a choice in who she goes with and why," Steve said, trying to be understood, hoping Bucky, out of every Deuce in the world, might be able to get it. "It's only fair."

This would usually have been where Bucky slapped Steve on the shoulder, jostled him into a hug, and explained for the thousandth time that the world didn't care a fart in a windstorm for fair. But instead, Bucky only sighed and struck out for the distant road again, saying, "Yeah. It is."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is always a fine line to walk, when you're writing a world where the physics and biology are not like ours, between getting bogged down in the worldbuilding, and baffling people with the random, unexplained differences, where they came from, and how they work. In this case, I've tried not to let the infodump-fairy loose at the expense of the plot, but if there is any interest in it, I can 'show my work' in a companion file, for those who want to geek out/debate the biology/evolutionary theory behind the choices I've made on how this world works. Just speak up if it's something you'd like to read, and I'll put it together. 
> 
> For those of you who've been commenting, I can't thank you enough. It's a rough patch right now, and the positive feedback really helps. Thanks.


	5. Grace of God Go I

"You're both staying out here," Tony tells Bruce and Clint once the bots have finished curling down the cut slice of the container's wall into a ramp. From behind their filter masks, the alpha and beta share the same half-panicky glance, but Tony is not buying any of that, and lets them know it with a growl. "I mean it. I need you close enough that he can get used to your scent gradually, as he's coming out of the drug and heat fog." He strips off his shirt, throws it at Bruce, and starts on his jeans with fingers that almost don't shake at all. "But if either one of you tries to come in before I tell you to, Jarvis will have the nearest bot taze you, am I clear?"

Clint rubs his neck and sidles back a step. "Look, I can just fuck off if you want," he says, and Jesus Christ, what are they making assassins out of these days? Dude looks like he wants to run off crying. "Not like I got anything to do with this now you're both here, so..."

"No," Bruce says, catching Clint's arm, then letting go like it's burned him. "No, you should stay." And looking at the alpha's pale, worried face, half-primed to guilt before he's even thought of doing anything guilt-worthy, Tony abruptly loses the fight not to roll his eyes.

"You're both staying," Tony says again, enunciating slowly, in case their hormones have turned them into idiots. "You're his pack, and Steve needs to know you're nearby-" a sliding, rustling thud and a whimper from inside the container distracts him, but only momentarily. "-even if he's too heat-sick to realize that yet." Tony's ears, sharper than those of his teammates, and further heightened by his building sympathy heat, pick out delirious mutterings in a ragged, muffled voice. Pleading words, like _'fair'_ and _choice'_ , and if Thor and Tasha were answering their goddamned phones, Tony would have them down here too, so their scents could combine to convince the great big helpless idiot that he wasn't under siege, or being stalked by rutting strangers, but surrounded by his family, protected and safe. He scrapes a hand through his hair, then shimmies out of his jeans with a grimace. "Jarvis, call Tasha and Thor in on the Avengers emergency line," he decides, "The whole team should be here for this."

"Tony," Bruce protests, and he can hear his alpha working to keep his tone gentle. "Steve might not want-"

"Steve _needs_ this, Bruce," Tony cuts over him, aware that his hormones are making him pushy, but frankly unable to care. "He went in there 'cause he was scared. Him! Captain America! Scared of us – of the team he trusts to save his back every time mutant squids or Doombots come crawling out of the harbor! Don't tell me that isn't a fucking team problem, all right?" 

"There's a time and a place," Bruce's tone hardens, but Tony can see him wavering. And he gets it, truly – Tony, more than anybody else, gets what's holding Bruce back by the scruff despite every rising instinct to cover, to claim, to comfort, and to protect. It's the same thing Steve's in there groaning about, the same thing every omega thinks about with a twist in their stomach the first time they pop a sweat and go all slick between their legs, the first time an alpha looms near with his tongue hanging out and his eyes glazing over; choice. 

But before Tony can try and explain, Jarvis, genius that he is, comes to the rescue. "Sir, the gas concentrations inside the container have reached safe levels for you now. By my calculations, the Captain should remain safely docile for approximately four minutes and fifteen seconds without direct intervention. I would suggest you-"

Tony waves his hand at the ceiling, and leans in to peck a kiss onto Bruce's filter mask. "Yep, got it. Clint, you stand over there," he says, pointing to where U is waiting with a mag lite in his grip. "Bruce, other side, with Dummy. You can get me things from the med kit, and he can pass them in to me when I ask. Clear?" 

Bruce catches Tony's elbow though, trying to plead and command at the same time with those big, puppy-brown eyes of his. "Tony, I can't... if he doesn't want... I won't. I just won't.

"I know, babe," Tony says, tucking his hand around Bruce's and using it to tug the big dumb meta-alpha to the spot Tony'd asked him to go. "Neither will I, or anybody else. Right, Barton?"

"Damn straight," the agent says, growl muffled behind his filters, but carried in his flinty grey eyes. Then he tips his head at the opened container and says, "But you need to get in there now, Stark. I see blood."

And that's all it takes to get Bruce moving. Tony just barely stops him climbing in through the hole, reminding him with a jerk to the shirt collar to hang back, that Steve isn't his problem yet. Tony knew there was blood, had smelled it clear and heavy the minute the container was breached, but he could also tell it was clotted and old. There's a bright edge to it now, but it's deeply buried beneath the thick, sweetly desperate smell of Steve's musk. Tony takes a deep lungful of it, lets the caramel-salt, linen and buttermilk of Steve's heat scent up a buzz inside his skin as he grabs the second case from Dummy, and a bottle of Gatorade from the crate. Then on soft, bare feet, he slips into the den, his eyes softening to the gloom as his nose leads him unerringly over the reeking, tangled bedding nest to Steve's side.

He's about ten feet down from the opening, slouched in a huddling, half-propped sort of sprawl, as though he'd been trying to crawl away from the nest when the gas overcame him. He is panting, muttering deliriously into the crook of his folded arms, and the light from behind paints a gleaming curve along the too-quick flex of shoulder and rib. Tony kneels, rubbing briefly at the glands in his own armpits and throat before he reaches, gently, gently, to stroke Steve's back, as if smoothing rumpled fur the right way down.

Steve flinches a little, and his breath catches in something that can only be called a sob, but Tony shushes him quietly and leans close to stroke the lank, filthy hair from the man's face. "Steve?" he murmurs, testing the waters.

"Ma?" It's almost a whimper, and it goes right through Tony's usually nonexistent nurturing side like a knife. Because it makes sense, in a horrible way, that the scent of a friendly omega would make the poor bastard think of his mom, who was probably dead before he'd ever gotten old enough to have his first heat. Tony pets his face again, trying to remember what his own mom had sung to soothe him during his first, but then suddenly Steve is curling right into Tony's lap, sweaty and shaking, and clinging almost too tight. "Ma, it hurts..." he groans, and there is a bite mark on his arm, welted up and bruise-purple under the blood smear. The knuckles of his left hand bulge out too far, swollen and red and heated as bone heals beneath the skin, and the fingers don't quite curl closed against Tony's hip.

"Hey, hey," Tony finds himself crooning as he rocks them both in place, suddenly and miraculously over his nervy fear that he might manage to fuck this up, that he might make Steve hate him all the more before they're through. "It's okay, Stevie, it's okay. You're okay, yeah? Just a little heat, baby, we'll get you through it. You're okay." 

It's nonsense babble, but he keeps it up while he finds sterile wipes from his case and starts to clean away the dried blood, sweat, and come from Steve's fevered skin. Steve doesn't answer, or give any sign that he understands a word of it, but he doesn't struggle, and only whimpers a little as he lets Tony clean the heat-slick from his ass and thighs, and he doesn't resist when Tony rolls him onto his back to get at the rest. His stomach is flexing as he breathes, too fast, too shallow, like he can't get a lung full, or thinks he can't. The flesh quivers under Tony's careful fingers, and the groan that follows is pure, anguished need – a violent arching of the spine, a cracking clench of those damaged hands, a flash of teeth that has Tony pulling his own hands out of reach for a flinching second.

Then he grabs Steve's wrists, and yanks the bruised fist away from Steve's mouth. "Nope. No more biting for you, Stevie," he chides as he spreads that hand as flat as he can over Steve's own chest, and holds it there. "You just work on your breathing now, and let me get you cleaned up." A fretful nod is his only answer, but the hand stays where he'd put it, and while Steve's breaths grow a little more labored, they do get deeper.

Tony is just finishing, and reaching for the drug patches when Clint's voice startles him. "Jesus, is that..." Tony glares back, annoyed that he'd actually forgotten the other men were there, and finds Clint staring at Steve's crotch, where his prick huddles low and shy against his thigh. "That's a deflated knot. How the hell can he be in that kind of heat when he's got an alpha's knot too?"

"Hold the damned light steady," Tony growls back, pressing Steve's shoulder down as he flinches and tries to huddle up again. 

"It's the serum," Bruce says, quiet and tense. "Happened the same way with me, only I was beta before, not omega. That's why neither one of us usually gives off ranking scent markers. Not unless we want to." There's silence after that bombshell, and Tony's hoping like hell that it'll be enough to shut Barton up. The last thing Steve needs is bedroom tourism in his face once the gas wears off and leaves him to the heat's mercy again. They'll never be able to seal this pack bond if he keeps hiding from them.

He tugs Steve up higher into his lap, murmuring and petting when he frets, telling him to settle and be good, and it shouldn't work. Cap doesn't let anyone, let alone Tony, talk to him like that without alphaing up and picking the bone to dust. But it's Tony's gut talking now, the sympathy heat getting right past all of his filters, and damned if Steve doesn't respond just like any omega to the praise. He presses his face into Tony's wrist, snuffling gently, tongue slipping out from between his teeth to lick weakly at the skin – pure animal submission. Tony sucks in a shaking breath and tries to ignore the surge of slick between his legs, or the way his own prick lurches with interest at the display.

"So... um..." Clint finds his voice again, though it's thin now, with laughter, or alarm, "does that mean the Hulk... I mean, does he... do you-"

Bruce actually growls, deep and low in his chest. "Does he what, exactly?"

And Tony has to roll his eyes, because good fucking god, how is he actually the only one here with more sense than a goldfish? "No, birdbrain," Tony calls back, plucking two hormone patches off the paper and sticking them behind Steve's knee. "I am not fucking the Hulk. Nobody is fucking the Hulk, because the Hulk isn't interested in fucking, just in smashing things." He sticks patches in each elbow, and four more as high into Steve’s armpit as he can get without setting off a heat response. It's way more than the dosage instructions recommend, but hey – Super soldier metabolism is clearly no joke, especially when it's serving up what looks like the pup-eating-mother of all repressed heat cycles. 

"Now I need you to get over your inner twelve year old please, and find me a clean towel or blanket in that nest there," he adds, not because he thinks Steve is ready, but because he wants to give Barton something else to think about before his mouth gets him in trouble with Bruce. Poor guy's already on edge, and without another functioning alpha in the Tower, Tony needs his buddy and partner to stay as cool as he can. Tony peels up a couple more patches, feeling the tingle against his fingers and hoping the hormones won't cool him down too much. Not now, while Steve needs him warm and nearby, and smelling of safety. 

He reaches low, tucking Steve's soft prick up out of the way to try and settle the last patch on the thin skin over his scrotum, but Steve yelps at the touch, flings himself off Tony's lap, and curls up tight around himself, groaning, "No. No, please don't. Don't... just don't touch me."

~*~

Five days after, and everything still reeked of HYDRA prison, of grease and filth, diesel and metal, and thick, creeping gas in a room with too many drains. It was worst in his own tent, where Bucky's clothes, the old ones he wore on the march out, were still filling up the trashcan. He'd scored new, clean ones somewhere, but neither of them had taken the old ones, or the ones Steve had worn on the raid, to be burned yet. (Steve wasn't even sure the USO suit was really his to burn at all, though he'd have done so cheerfully if he thought he could get away with it.) Steve would have apologized to Peggy for the stink, and for the crowded clutter of his tent as well, only he was frankly too shocked to think of the words when we walked in to find her waiting there for him, tidy as a cat on the spare cot he'd scrounged for Bucky.

"Steven, your friend Barnes," she said without preamble. "I'm having him and the rest of the 107th transferred to SSR command." She paused then, as if she expected him to object, then went on with a half-shrug when he didn't. 

"We've no idea what the effects of having those men exposed to HYDRA's manufactory has been, and we can't have rumors of what went on there getting out into general population. All these men must either stay, or be discharged."

There, finally, Steve nodded. "And we need all the boots we can get on the ground. Understood, Ma'am."

"Peggy, Steven please," she sighed. "I am trying to tell you about your friend here, not your orders. Sit." She waved a hand at his bunk, then when he hesitated, arched her eyebrow and added, "Please?"

He did, setting the dispatch case aside as she offered up a relieved smile, and waved a hand at the small tray on the desk between them. "There now. Tea?"

Steve couldn't help cringing. "Is it that bad?"

"It's..." she shook her head, dark curls rolling over her shoulders. "Steven, your report said you found Sergeant Barnes in a prison medical facility. That he had been the subject of experiments. Did he reveal to you what the nature of those experiments were?"

"No," Steve said, tamping down on the defensive growl he could feel buzzing in his chest. "Bucky was pretty rough when I found him. To be honest he wanted more to talk about the experiments done on me. I thought it was too soon to push him about the other." He didn't add that talking about that kind of torture when the whole column of them was a hundred miles deep in enemy territory wasn't exactly a smart thing either. Peggy would have thought of that, he was sure.

"Of course," she nodded, "of course. And have you seen him since your return?"

Steve sat back, surprised. "Well yeah. He's... I'm sharing my tent with him till he gets assigned one of his own." He hadn't _thought_ the tent stank bad enough to cover the twinned scents of them in it, but he tasted the air worriedly all the same.

Peggy saw him do it, and shook her head with a tiny smile, only her eyes laughing at him, and then only briefly. "Are you aware that he's not been assigned his own bunk solely because he's not yet been cleared, or even seen by medical?" she asked then, holding Steve's shocked gaze when the penny dropped. "Sergeant Barnes is technically AWOL, given that the general medical order for your flock of rescued prisoners came from Colonel Phillips directly."

"I'll talk to the Colonel," Steve said, pushing to his feet.

Her reply, deep, rumbling, and all alpha, yanked him up short of the flap. "Steven, sit down." He turned, teeth set and the hair on his neck rising, but Peggy was still seated, hands folded in her lap, eyes neither locked to his in challenge, nor turned down in submission. Alpha to call him out, but null to keep him there and thinking. "Your friend isn't in trouble," she went on, nodding at Steve's bunk expectantly. "But he may be in danger."

He took a deep breath and returned to his seat, hung between gratitude and resentment at her manipulation. "How?"

He couldn't tell from her fleeting glance whether she knew it or not, but her voice was smooth and unruffled as she went on. "The prisoners reported similar data about the men who were taken from the cells into the science wing. First, that they often did not return, but second was that those few who did, returned..." the glance she flicked up at him was quick and weighing. "...changed." 

"Changed." Steve didn't strip the challenge out of his voice. He was too worried for that, too deeply caught on the need not to give his best friend up again -- not to anything or anyone.

"Not unlike in the way in which you and I have been changed, Steven." She was leading him, not even hiding it. 

"He's alpha now?" he asked, wanting it to be true, "Or... meta-alpha?"

"I... no, Steven. It doesn't seem so." And there was no way to read that, from the tone of her voice to the liquid sympathy in her deep eyes, but sorrow and regret.

Steve closed his eyes and held his breath until the urge to throw something passed.

"The Nazis are obsessed with breeding programs," she said gently into his personal darkness. "One of our objectives for Project: Rebirth -- what we'd hoped for with the meta-alpha adjustment, anyway -- was to stabilize, for the short term, the status rankings within allied fighting forces in the field. To cut down on ranking strife, and allow for promotions and leadership based on merit rather than on status."

Steve nodded. His rank, Peggy's authority, none of those would have been possible with them reeking of omega and dropping into heat every six weeks. Erskine had explained it to him before the treatment, and just the promise of his status _not mattering_ would have been enough to get Steve to agree to it, even without all the rest. A warm cup settled into the cradle of his hands, and Steve blinked up, glad to have something to hold.

"We believe," Peggy said, reclaiming her seat and taking her own cup with her, "that Schmidt's agenda, and from our intelligence reports out of Berlin, most likely Hitler's as well, is to create a race of enhanced alphas with almost no betas, and only enough breeding omegas to keep its numbers stable. There are rumors of breeding camps for omegas in Poland and Czechoslovakia. It's brutal, and inhumane..." there, at last, she lost the fight to keep her voice steady and untainted by the horror Steve could tell they both felt at the idea. She paused to sip at her tea, and then coughed. "Still, the signs seem clear. In the Hydra facility, the omega soldiers who were on or near their cycle off-null were taken out of general assembly first. Then the rest were removed as their injections expired and revealed their scent status to their captors. At that time they began to remove betas as well, and a small few of those returned to the cells smelling fertile."

Steve drank his tea, putting all his strength into not crushing the cup. "But you don't know for sure," he said once he'd managed to make himself swallow. "Scent can be faked, and the prisoners in the cells said they didn't know what went on in that place-"

Peggy's voice cut through, making it obvious to Steve how shrill his own had gotten. "I think it's likely they wished not to know," she said. "I believe I might have done the same, had I been there."

"But there have to have been other prisoners who survived the experiments, right? You said the prisoners told about some who came back changed, so what did the docs find out with them?" He was grasping, and he knew it, but damn it there had to be _something_.

"Steven," she crushed his hope with a gentle voice. "Until four days ago, we never had a single successful rescue from Hydra. Not one man, before you brought back two hundred. Everything we have, every scrap of information I'm able to tell you is cobbled together from the reports those men are giving right now, and from what you yourself said about the facility."

"So you might be wrong," he challenged. "About Bucky. He might still be a beta just like he always was."

She shook her head, not rising to it. "I'm not wrong, Steven. If you cannot bring yourself to ask him, then bring him to me, and I will ask him. If his status has changed, he will be-"

"Discharged?" Steve was on his feet again, cup still in his hands. "No. I need him. My squad needs him, and I don't care what his status is. Bucky's still a crack shot, tough as nails. Nobody's better-"

"I know," she soothed. "He could not have survived the torture otherwise, but Steven we can't even know if it's safe to put him on nullifiers for active duty. Not until we've studied what's been done to him, and how."

 _'You're an experiment'_ , Steve could hear Colonel Phillips' voice in his head, rank with disappointed dismissal, already turning away. He put the cup down before he could crush it, and took in a heavy breath to speak. "You think it's easy for Bucky to let a doctor near him after what the last one put him through?" he asked, proud of the way his voice neither shook, nor rumbled. "He hasn't even slept through the night yet, but... but you can't send him home alone, Peggy. You just... can't." And if Steve Rogers knew a thing or two about manipulation, and if he made his eyes large and wet, and let his loneliness and helpless devotion to his best friend, his hero show on his face, well what was it but fair play?

Peggy sighed, shaking her head and glancing aside to examine the travel stickers on Steve's foot locker. "Of course not, Steven," she said, dry voiced and weary. "Leaving aside the imprint you two seem to have carried for each other since childhood-"

"Imprint?" Steve blurted, struggling not to blush.

"-And the very strong likelihood of a passive bonding when you carried him out of that torture chamber," Peggy went on with a pointed glare, "Barnes has simply seen too much of Hydra to be cut free and sent home. At very least he'll need to be kept safely at the base in an intelligence and interpretation capacity. Somewhere he can be sequestered and protected when his heats come on, but still within reach of his pack." And here, she leveled a pointed, expectant look on Steve, and drove the point home. "Within reach of you."

But even as the _want_ surged up in him, familiar in quality while mortifyingly new in tenor, Steve knew it wouldn't -- couldn't work. "He won't," Steve said, not so much sitting on his bunk as falling onto it again. "Bucky... Jeez, Peggy, he won't be confined. He'll run. He'll be-"

She leaned, bridging the space between the two cots to rest her hands on his where they knotted between his knees. "Barnes needs you, Steve," Peggy told him, calm and commanding at once. "That imprint of yours, and whatever pack bonds he was able to form in captivity might be the only thing that will save your friend." 

Steve sighed, not quite ready to explain to Peggy how things only ran one way between them, that Steve might carry the imprint of the boy who'd saved him over and over again for years, but there were uncounted dames between him and a similar imprint on Bucky's side. He might be able to pass for an alpha now, but how could he ever be anything but the pipsqueak punk to Bucky -- a brother at best, a burden the rest of the time. 

Yet when he opened his mouth to try for the words, he found Peggy had fixed him with a stare more loaded than her gun. "It's either that," she said, her voice hard now, "or a proper pair bond with an alpha soldier in the field, if he'll have it. Command won't break those up, even when they happen on deployment, and so long as there's no pregnancy, he'll be able to remain in the field." She sat back, setting aside her own cup on the tray, and brushing invisible lint from her trousers. "So if there is another alpha in that squad you've chosen, I can speak to Colonel Phillips about making an official introduction when Barnes' fertile cycle begins."

The fact that Steve wasn't fooled by the tactic didn't make it any easier to choke down the anger that rose into his throat at that. That of all people, _Peggy_ would even suggest it. He did try though. He was, quite literally, the bigger man, after all. "I... I won't let the army mate Bucky off like that," he said, hands clenched together so they wouldn't shake. "He's my... He deserves the right to choose who he- Ow!" 

The towel was damp, heavy and cold, but it was the shaving kit wrapped up inside it that really stung when it whapped upside Steve's head. He peeled it free to find Bucky, half dressed and crimson with rage at the foot of his bunk. "You are a stupid jackass, Rogers!" he snarled, fists clenching and flexing with his every breath.

"Bucky, what-"

"Sergeant Barnes," Peggy warned.

Bucky didn't so much as glance, just flashed his teeth her way and snarled, "Get off my bedroll. _Now!_ " he shouted when she didn't move. "I want to talk to my goddamned Captain."

"Bucky?" Steve reached for his arm, even knowing he'd be shaken off. "You okay?"

"No," his laugh was raucous and strangely broken, and his grey eyes were dilated and glassy as he stared Steve in the eye and pleaded in a shaking voice, "Get her out, Steve. Get her out before I-"

They both flinched when Peggy thrust to her feet, all crisp pleats and smooth temper. "Steven. Handle this," she nodded the order his way, and then strode to the tent flap without yielding an inch of space to Bucky's throaty growl. "We'll talk later."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A close call this time, my Hemlocks -- the technovore nearly got all my copies of the _Changeling_ working document. Yes, all. Word, Scrivener, and Backups too. It was touch and go there for a few hours, but we've managed to scratch and claw a fairly intact version of the document back from oblivion in time for tonight's posting. It was a terriffic battle, and there were casualties... and wine and broken glass, and bruises and sewing pins all over the place too -- consequential to the attempted crash, not precipitating thereof, strangely enough. Yeah. It's been exciting, and team Clue totally needs a brownie or six now. Praise be to the fastness of Dropbox, and may it stand firm against such fuckery henceforth. *Knocks wood*
> 
> Thanks be to all you who've kept me company with your comments and kudos on this. They're especially treasured in the wake of an epic battle like this one, I tell ye. *Cuddles one and all*


	6. Mercy, Pity, Peace

"Don't touch you, Steve," Tony asks, after re-swallowing his heart, "or don't touch you _there_?"

There's a breathless, frozen moment. Clint's movement stilled behind him, Steve's gasping halted, hung up on the sudden realization that he really isn't alone, Tony waiting to see whether he needs to reach out, or run. Then Steve shivers so suddenly and so hard that it shakes a groan from between his teeth. "It hurts," he says, and a fresh, redolent wave of his heat scent rises straight to Tony's head, "The knot. Hurts so, so bad. Tony, I can't."

It's the name that gets him, past the clench of his own gut and the buzz of his own rising heat inside Tony's skin. The way it rolls off Steve's lips like he didn't even have to think, or choose between that and 'Stark', the way he always does when things are 'normal' between them. Like this is real, the truth lurking underneath the hesitation, and the arm's length, polite neutrality Steve works so hard to keep up, like it's this terrified, vulnerable creature he's hiding, rather than the precise, tactical brutality the Captain brings out on the battlefield. Tony leans close again, sweeps a hand along Steve's damp velvet shoulder, just to test his reaction. The flinch is slight and brief, and Tony's cock twitches at the feel of it against his palm. 

"It's fine then," he says, and makes himself take his hand away when Steve unfolds just enough to turn his head and meet Tony's eyes. "Hands off, I promise. Just let me put these on your neck, okay?" He holds up the two patches on his fingertips. "They'll help you get steady."

He frowns, not nearly so forbidding as usual with his face flushed with sweat and his pupils blown wide. "What are..." then he notices the patch already in his elbow, and blinks. "Nullifiers?"

"No, Steve," Bruce answers from the doorway. "We don't use those anymore. Not since the late fifties. Those have a synthetic version of the alpha hormones in them."

Steve struggles to sit up, and doesn't complain when Tony slips his arms under Steve's to help, and stays cuddled up behind afterward. Tony settles the hand with the patches on Steve's knee, where he can clearly see them, and shamelessly sips the rich smell of Steve's hair through his open mouth. He wants nothing more than to lick the other omega and see if he tastes as perfect as he smells, but Tony satisfies himself with petting gently at the perfect washboard of Steve's stomach while his cock twitches unseen and his ass drools slick all over his heels.

"I don't understand," Steve says, and there's a fine tremor in his chest when he speaks to Bruce, whose alpha scent has risen, thick and sharp to what he's seeing, even though his mask filters out the scent of Steve readiness and Tony's readiness to play too. Tony wraps his arm around Steve's belly, lays a gentling kiss to Steve's shoulder, and the trembling eases. "Are you trying to trigger a change in... in me?" He sounds so damned hopeful it twists Tony's stomach to hear it. But he has to shake his head.

"It's what your body's craving, Steve," Tony murmurs, stroking the sensitive glands in Steve's throat with his thumb, mingling their scents on his skin. The result is perfect, dizzying, like they're old lovers and have been comfort-fucking each other for years, cycle-synched and tucked up tight in the heart of a pack who'd kill the world to keep them safe, and now it's Tony who's shivering with it. It's a kind of fantasy Tony's never allowed himself to have before, and the strength of it crashing into him now is nothing short of dizzying.

He blinks hard, grabs for his words again. "It's why you hurt, Steve. These patches aren't resisting the heat, they're buying it off a little, so you can think. So you can focus enough to make a choice about what happens next." He feels Steve's belly clench up hard under his hand, and squeezes just a little tighter, refusing to let up, or to let go. "That's what you wanted, right? To choose?"

"That's why we're all here, Cap," Clint says low and smooth, from a cluster of shadows that's way closer than anybody expected him. Somehow his scent is subtler, hidden under the welter of omega and the looming punch of alpha nearby – a calming note against the swirl of rising want. Clint waits until Tony gentles Steve's flinch before he moves, then he shakes out a soft white towel and offers it for Steve to take or leave, as he likes. "To make sure you get what you want, and only that."

Tony feels Steve hold his breath, thinking. Then he reaches for the towel with his damaged hand, fingers not-quite brushing Clint's as the material drops free. Steve settles the towel over his lap, hiding his half-hard cock and the gleaming crux of his thighs from view. He cranes his head to rub his cheek on Tony's hair when he nods and says, "Okay." Then he dips his chin down, docile as a lamb, and waits for Tony to stick the patches behind each ear. They add a faint tang of bitter rose as they warm to his skin, but Tony doesn't mind it at all.

"When will they start working?" Steve asks once Tony's done, and he has to stifle the urge to laugh.

He strokes his fingers through Steve's sweaty hair and nuzzles into the short, fine strands. "Stevie, they're working already. I know," he says, tugging gently as Steve flashes a betrayed look his way, "I know you still feel rough. They're helping, but they're not gonna do it all. That's why we're not done yet." And Jesus fuck, he can smell the sudden spike of horrified lust that rolls off Steve's skin at just that veiled hint, can feel the shiver start up in his bones as he huddles suddenly away from Tony's skin.

Tony lets him go, but leaves his hands where they've slid against Steve's side and back, waiting. "Do I..." he swallows, so dry the clicking sound of it echoes in the metal chamber. Clint rolls the bottle of Gatorade toward them, and Tony catches it up and cracks it open at once. It's gone room temperature, but that only means he can bump it against Steve's shoulder and get only a little cringe before he takes it. 

"Steve, whatever you think is gonna happen, I promise it won't be bad," he tries, baffled at how the man's superhuman biology can be failing so badly at such a simple, simple thing as making the sex easy, instinctive and fun.

Steve drinks half the bottle down in one long, startled pull before he manages to speak again. "It's just... Coming," he manages with a furtive glance. "Orgasm. It hurt, before. Hurt real bad, and I don't... I don't think I can take it again." His skin's already flushed from his heat, but Tony can just tell that Steve would be blushing to his toes if he wasn't red already. It'd be cute if he wasn't already starting to shake again, if his eyes weren't losing focus again, and if the heat scent, the want scent swirling around them so thick Tony can taste it in the back of his throat weren't fringing with a bright edge of actual pain.

Tony makes himself grin, carefree and cavalier, and pretending he isn't slick enough to glide uphill. "Hey, no problem," he says, turning to reach again for the case. "But nothing says your dick has to get hard for you to get off, right? I don't get erections at all during my heats, but I still come like crazy, over and over again. So..." He pulls out the toy with one hand, lube with the other, and brandishes both like a stage magician. "Behold; the future!" 

The shocked disapproval in Steve's eyes is so, so much better than the fear, and Tony has to laugh with relief as he thumbs open the bottle and pours the lube into the reservoir in the toy's base before slathering it generously along the curved length. It's one of his favorites, this toy; good sized without being ridiculous, vibrating, self warming, and with a knotting feature that comes closer to hitting the spot than anything shy of a live, rutting alpha. Tony hasn't needed to use it since he and Bruce came to their arrangement, but handling it now brings up a warm glow of nostalgia in his guts. Not that his guts need any help with glowing right now, thanks.

Especially since it seems to be a glow Steve doesn't share, judging from how he's pulling even farther away from their warm huddle, eyes wide and sweaty skin going pale. "Do... do I have to?" he asks in a very small voice.

"No," Barton says it at the same time Tony does, but from Bruce the reassurance is an order, rumbling low and absolute in a pitch that makes Tony's neck bend in submission even as his sex clenches with hunger. Clint even hunches a little lower in his shadows at the growl.

Bruce is standing across the entry hole now, hands gripping either side of the opening, like he's ready to block out an army if necessary. "No, Steve," he says when Steve looks up and swallows a whine. "You don't have to do _anything_. Not unless you want to, you understand?"

Steve nods immediately, and Tony can tell it's more omega reflex than actual comprehension. He shifts his weight, shivering with arousal as air strokes coolly over his damp crease and thighs, lifting his eager scent out into the air to blend more perfectly with Steve's. God, they smell good together... But Tony makes himself behave. 

"No, you don't, Steve," he repeats Bruce's order, drawing those blue eyes back to him again. "The patches will work, but not as well, or as fast, and they won't hold the second spike off for long either." He shrugs ruefully, remembering his first painful experiments after returning from Afghanistan. "Sorry, buddy. We can try some more of the patches if you want, but your skin's just not where you were built to take in this chemistry. Here," he says, offering the open lube to Steve, watching for the inevitable reaction, for the moment when the hormone scent reaches his brain and makes its promise plain.

He has a second, less than a second from the startled dilation of those already-wide pupils, to Steve's lunge for the bottle. Both hands catch Tony's and squeeze, shaky but still strong as the lube fountains out all over Steve's fingers and fills the air with alpha-scent – pungent but anonymous against Bruce's more organic presence. Steve groans, and Tony has to swallow the flood of hunger that fills up his mouth at the smell of them all together.

"It's just chemistry, see?" Tony says, quiet and calm as he can, pretending he isn't ready to hump his own hand the first chance he gets. "You need these hormones. Your body needs it, and if you don't get enough of it -- whether from a patch, or a bottle, or a living alpha – your next heat will be even worse. Hard to believe, but... yeah. " Tony tugs gently against Steve's grip, slipping loose his hand, but leaving the bottle behind. "You need this," he repeats, watching Steve bring his glistening knuckles to his face, sniff deeply, lick, and then grimace at the taste. "How you get it is all up to you, Steve."

Steve's many things – uptight, obsolete, overly polite to anyone not-Tony, a fashion disaster, aloof in private, dickishly controlling on the battlefield, and apparently a virginal, closeted omega too -- but he isn't slow. He doesn't have to watch Tony reach down between his own legs to get the hint – his hands, both of them dripping with good-enough-for-now, shake as they slip into the towel's shadow. He hisses, flinches, and a shudder courses through him as he moves his cock out of the way, but then Steve's head tips back on a groan that goes all the way down. 

Tony wants to touch him more than he can say, wants to stroke the swells and dips of his flushing chest, wants to lick at his throat and jaw, wants to straddle Steve's bulging thigh and rub his own slick all over it, but no. No, he's promised not to touch, not even to cuddle, and what a goddamned crime _that_ is, with Steve shaking like that, whimpering as his arms flex and work, driving him to where he might not want to go, but where his greedy body's going to take him regardless. The sticky, wet sounds, the lax, glistening fall of Steve's open lips, the half-lidded concentration on his face is almost more than Tony can take.

"God, you're perfect," Tony tells him, setting the toy down just by Steve's knee then sitting back against the press of his own fingers, because goddamnit, he is _not_ made of stone here. Steve glances over, something raw, shamed and grateful in his eyes as the surrogate prick topples against his thigh, then rolls to the floor. "You are," Tony tells him again, and means it – means it in a deeper place than the sex-scented moment hovering between them, a deeper place than all their squabbling fights, the soured hero-worship, the family baggage. He means it from the place where Steve's loneliness echoes in sympathy with his own, and he aches on an animal level to fill that void and smooth it over till neither of them can remember what being alone in the world felt like. "You've got nothing to hide, Steve. Nothing bad. Not from us."

A ragged sound tears out of Steve's throat then, animal and brief as he clenches his eyes closed, and Tony thinks he'll shake his head, deny the offer, refuse the welcome again as he's done so many times, in so many ways before. But he only pants into the thick air for a breath or two, then wrenches one hand free to fumble after the toy. His balance crumbles at the sudden lurch though, and Tony has to lunge to stop Steve from toppling to the rough, filthy floor. 

"Easy," he laughs, petting as Steve turns against him, nuzzling his open, panting mouth against Tony's neck. His side presses Tony's prick in time with his breath, and spun up as he is, Tony's pretty sure he could come from just that, if it went on long enough, especially if he could get his fingers back into... But no. No, this isn't about him. He fidgets a bit, moves the weight of Steve's hip a little to the side, and strokes Steve's hair, saying, "Easy now, Stevie. No rush. Just roll with it and you'll be fine."

"Please," Steve breathes, even as he's angling the toy into himself, "Tony, _please_!"

"I've got you," he promises, rocking them just a little as Steve arches up into the sensation of being finally filled properly. "We're here for you, Steve. Right guys?"

"Right here, buddy," Clint says at once, close enough that he could take hold of Steve's ankle, but settled into a comfortable, unmoving huddle, fingers laced securely over his own knee instead. He's putting off more arousal scent now, and Tony can't see whether he's hard or not, but there's the same kind of spotlight focus in his eyes as when they're kicking alien ass and he's got his bow in his hands.

"You're safe, Steve," Bruce agrees, kneeling now in the entryway, his voice deepened with lust, his trousers tented blatantly. "I won't let anyone near to hurt you."

"None of us will," Natasha's voice jolts through Tony's fuck-haze like a taser, but Steve's too far gone to notice it when Tony clutches him in panic. He just groans, licks at Tony's neck, and works himself harder. Tony manages to get his breath back under control by the time the deadly, elegant null steps onto the ramp behind Bruce. She's wearing a cocktail dress, has her shoes in her hands, and the lights make a bloody halo of her loose hair. A thin strand of pearls slinks around her throat, and an abstract part of Tony's brain figures it could probably double as a garrote.

Thor, looming behind her in jeans and a flannel shirt, says nothing, but his hammer is in his hand, and his face is set and fierce with loyalty, and Tony kind of loves them all in that moment. That they'd come like this, walk into the welter of weirdness going on here based on whatever explanation Jarvis gave them and just roll with it. That's trust. That's loyalty. 

And _that's_ Agent fucking Coulson on the ramp behind Natasha, stripping off his ever-present suit with precise, unhurried movements. If he weren't already about six steps from coming, Tony would totally lose his boner at the shock that sight sends through him. 

Before Tony can so much as growl a challenge though, Steve gives the toy a ferocious shove, and rocks hard, keening against Tony's shoulder. Tony has to ease him back down into his rhythm with whispers and kisses, and can't spare attention for mortification or selfishness. Coulson is down to his shorts, flushed pink and half hard by the time Tony's gets them both balanced again and swaying in time with the rhythm Steve needs.

"Dr. Banner," the agent murmurs, touching Bruce's shoulder, and offering a wrist in the antiquated greeting of omega to alpha, and who the fuck would have guessed _that_? "May I pass?"

Bruce flickers a glance at Steve, who is too far gone to say much of anything, or even to notice the question. Then he looks at Tony, who weathers a surge of nasty possessiveness before he lets it go with a nod, and a furtive lick against Steve's sweaty temple. This isn't about him. A second omega will help Steve feel safer, and SHIELD agent or not, it's pretty obvious that there isn't anybody alive in the world who cares more about Steve's safety than Coulson. Even if Tony _was_ there first.

Bruce rubs a thumb over Coulson's proffered wrist, the closest he can get to the traditional response with the filter mask in the way, then he shuffles to the side and lets the agent ease down into the redolent darkness. Tony's hot, wet and panting by now, flying high on pheromones, and not up to much more than an approving groan as Coulson settles against his back and reaches around to take Tony's aching cock in hand. "Bad?" he asks in a gentle voice.

Tony nods. "Real bad. Three days in."

Coulson makes a low noise in his throat, and does this thing with his wrist that makes Tony bite his lip against a pleading yelp. "Longer than that," he says, and his other hand reaches around Tony's shoulder to thread his fingers into Steve's hair. "Longer by years."

"What?" Tony asks, keeping his hips still under the double onslaught of Steve's writhing and Coulson's handjob by sheer willpower alone. 

He can feel the twist of Coulson's smile against his neck; can feel the tiny little headshake too, as he says, "Later." Then his grip tightens, rough, and aching, and perfect, and he butts Tony's head down toward Steve's. Using his hold on Steve's hair, Coulson draws his face aside and expose his throat at the perfect angle. "He's close enough now," Coulson urges, breath hot against Tony's ear.

Tony's mouth floods with heat at the smell of Steve's skin. He has to swallow before he can set his teeth to the long, taut muscle and bite down hard – hard enough to mark, hard enough to bruise Steve's creamy skin in the way any omega craves at a time like this. Hard enough to hang on when Steve arches up like a drawn bow in his hands and _howls._ Hard enough to muffle his own groan as Coulson's teeth and sweaty fist set him off, and he pulses wetly, gratefully over Steve's sweaty back. 

Luckily, Coulson's braced to catch them all, though he does grunt a bit when Steve's boneless slump adds a couple hundred pounds to the equation. Still, his hands are warm and steady as he plucks the towel off Steve's hip and starts to clean them all up. Tony's content to leave him to it – he's still busy just trying to remember what to do with air.

"All right Gentlemen, Lady," Coulson – or maybe Tony should really think of him as 'Phil' now that his hand is covered with Tony's goods -- nods to the others once he's done what one towel can. "I recommend we adjourn this meeting to somewhere with a shower, and better chairs."

"I second that," Tony whines, realizing only now that his knees are _killing_ him. "Bruce, Clint, help – I've fallen in an omega pile and I can't get up!" Which wins him a laugh and a roll of eyes, but the two men come in smiling, not freaked out, and that's better than Tony had hoped for when he went in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early posting this time, ducks. Stuff going on. Bit distracted, need to be sure this gets off ok, before I have to go head-down into That Other Thing for awhile.
> 
> Thanks as always to those who've been reading along, and letting me know your thoughts! It truly does help.


	7. Dreaming All Of You

Chapter 7: Dreaming All of You

Bucky smelled of soap and lust and sour-sharp jealousy. Steve had only a moment to take a breath of it over his tongue before the man had climbed into his lap, strong thighs clamped warm and hard over Steve's own, his bare, shower-damp chest thrust tight against the buttons on Steve's jacket.

Steve's hands settled on Bucky's hips without his thinking about it. "Bucky," he said, then swallowed down the frantic squeak in his voice to try again. "You're... are you in-" The question became moot at once when Buck shoved his hard cock against Steve's belly with a glare.

"I'm heating up, yeah," he said, then bit his lip. "I think. I don't know what it's supposed to feel like... for an Ought. Deuce-heat ain't like this. Not at all..."

"Here," Steve said, and pressed Bucky back to perch over his knees, taking a silent breath of relief at the cool space between them. "Sit down. Your back hurt?" He ran his fingers under the bind of Bucky's waistband, pressing the corded muscles there in long strokes. "Down low like this?" 

Bucky hissed through his teeth and arched over the pressure, like he didn't know whether he wanted to push into it or squirm away. "Aches," he gritted. "My knees too, and..." The thighs braced over Steve's flexed, and he couldn't help but see how Bucky's fly buttons were ridged out taut over an erection that looked every bit as big as the ones Steve remembered glimpsing before, when they'd shared a cold water walkup in Brooklyn. "All over, really."

Steve swallowed, rubbing circles over Bucky's heated skin even as his own belly sank. "Hungry or thirsty?"

"God no. Not for days."

"And your... um." Steve had to close his eyes then, the sweet, musky scent rising from the wide spread of Bucky's legs was coiling up around his brain like smoke from a reefer house. Even suppressing as hard as he could, Steve was going to be hard and half-knotted just from the smell if Bucky didn't move off soon. "Your behind," he asked, blushing. "Are you... wet?"

Bucky showed his teeth at that. "Christ, you can't _smell_ it?" he demanded, and threaded both hands into Steve's hair to yank his head forward, to bury Steve's nose in the crook of his neck and hold it there, lips pressed to his racing pulse. "I reek of sex to _myself_ right now. Surprised half the camp ain't sniffing the door."

"I'm suppressing my alpha traits right now," Steve muttered against Bucky's throat, resisting the urge to growl and check the doorflap for lurking rivals. He forced the rising energy down, breathing deep and even through his nose, the way Peggy had showed him back in Basic, and ignoring the spike of growing pain behind his right eye. Headache, Steve could deal with -- violating his best friend's trust in a moment of weakness, he absolutely could not.

"Well quit, dammit!" Bucky snapped yanking at Steve's hair and grinding his crotch in close against Steve's belly again. "You can't leave me to somebody else, Steve," he groaned as Steve's hands clenched on his hips, "you just can't. Whatever you are now, it's alpha enough for whatever those Hydra bastards turned me into, and I want it." Another rutting squirm brought his weight squarely down across the swelling in Steve's own pants and sparked stars across his clenched eyes. Steve winced, then sobbed a breath at the sudden sting of teeth on the crown of his ear and the heated tongue that followed after. "Steve, damn it, I want you."

Steve's belly twisted, but he couldn't make himself let go. He rubbed his lips along the line of Bucky's throat, tasting salt and shaving soap and musk with every murmured word. "Buck, you don't." Was he pleading? Did he care? Another deep breath, held for a long count of five while pain flashed and grew inside his skull, then pushed all the way out on a moan. "You don't really. That's the heat talking."

"Damn it, Steve-"

He pulled back, shook lose Bucky's grip on his hair and glared like he wasn't hard and half knotted already, like he hadn't dreamed of this-but-not-quite-this since Bucky's balls dropped and his own tepid first heat came on. "You never wanted me before, and you don't want me now. You just want relief."

"God, how can you be this stupid?" Bucky gripped his lapels, tried to shake him, like back when Steve was little and shakeable, but was too shaky himself to manage it. His eyes were fever-bright though, as he hissed through his teeth, "I always wanted you too, Punk. Always." 

"Buck." Steve had to close his eyes against the pitiful lurch of emotion the lie stirred up in his guts. He couldn't believe that. He didn't dare believe that – not when he'd wanted it so bad, so uselessly for so damned long. Not when he'd seen Bucky spin half truths and outright lies to lead pretty dames and betas on to exactly where he wanted them to go. Not when he'd been there in the morning to watch the truth hit them like a barrel of bricks; that James Buchanan Barnes just wasn't the bonding type.

But James Buchanan Barnes was, as always, ruthless in getting his way, and like always, he knew just how to get Steve if not convinced, then at least cooperating. He draped himself over Steve's shoulders in a sudden slump, arms locked behind, his sweet, musky throat drugging the air next to Steve's face as he whispered, hot and close into his ear. "I chose you when we were kids, Steve," he said, the perfect shake in his voice, the perfect squirm in his hips. "Couldn't keep you then, but damn it, I choose you now!"

"Bucky..." When had he wrapped his arms around like that? When had he fitted his palms to the flex of Bucky's ribs, fingers slotted in between standing ridges of bone bereft of the muscle that should have been there, had always been there? When had he begun to rock his hips up into Bucky's weight, and lick that heady, buttery, half-bitter scent from the curve of Bucky's shoulder like he was starving for it? When had the light begun to sparkle at the edges of his vision, in time to the pounding of blood in his prick and temples? When the hell had he fallen in love?

Bucky gave a shiver in his arms, so hard it seemed like it might break him apart. "God, please stop hiding in there," he groaned, nails digging at the seams of Steve's uniform. "You smell so cold, and I need... I'm scared, Steve, I'm-" Steve's control and his headache broke at the same time, the resistance-pain burning away in the sudden, roaring hunger of rutting heat that raged like wildfire through his skin.

He felt himself growling, a rumble in his chest as his arms and his teeth clamped down on the omega at the same time. His scalp prickled, sweat-heat a sudden itch in his armpits and groin, along his hairline as Bucky keened in his grip. "Oh Jesus, there you are. Oh Steve...You punk, you stupid punk, why were you hiding this from me?"

It was a relief to let it out, to stop pushing down against the urge to rut, to stop trying to think and reason through the ache of suppression, to just let hungry red stain the world and everything in it. He rolled his head back, licked Bucky's musk from his lips and ground Bucky's ass down against him harder. "Shh," he soothed as Bucky wailed and squirmed, taking a dark handful of Bucky's too-long hair to pull his face into view. "We'll take it easy. Like we used to do it with your old heats, remember? When I was sick and you didn't want to leave me alone?"

"Damn it," Buck ground, his eyes glassy and blown, "You're an Ace now, Steve, why-"

"Rubbers, Bucky," Steve said, and shifted to set Bucky aside before one or both of them shredded Steve's only dress uniform. "I don't have any rubbers. Not the right kind, anyway."

"The hell with-"

"No!" Bucky flinched and went still, and Steve made himself swallow down the growl a little, petting Bucky's sweating face in silent apology. "We don't know what that quack Nazi doc did to you yet," he said, fumbling his buttons loose with fingers that wanted more to tear. "Not all of it. I'm not going to-" he cursed under his breath, realizing he was going to have to put Bucky down to unlace his boots. "We can't risk you getting- whoa, easy," he cried as Bucky suddenly pitched to the side on Steve's cot. "You all right?

"Baby," Bucky murmured, staring up at Steve with shining eyes. "I could..." he shivered at Steve's concerned touch, and grabbed for his hands in a frantic clutch. "You could give me a baby. Steve. I want one. I want a baby!"

Steve gasped, his cock surging against his fly buttons in an eager jolt of _yes, yes, YES_ at the idea. But his brain had enough traction to remember what a terrible ( _wonderful_ ) idea that was, and exactly why they couldn't ( _want to!_ ) do it. "Now I know that's the heat talking," he made himself laugh as he turned to take care of his boots, whipping the laces out of their holes so fast the lashback left red welts on his wrists. 

"Steeeeeve!" Hands pawed at Steve's back, setting shivers racing along his spine, but he shook the touch off and glared.

"No, Buck, not like this. Now you wanna get those pants off, or should I just rip a hole?" That tone of command had never cut much fat with Bucky when they'd been kids, but now it made the man's eyes roll back into his head as he scrambled to obey. Unlaced boots went flying, and Steve had to catch Bucky's hands to stop him ripping the buttons in getting his pants off. His shorts were thin cotton, soaked through and redolent with sweet musk. Steve's hands shook at the thick, wet stain, and it took an effort of will not to bury his nose in them instead of throwing the shorts aside. But Bucky whined his name again, and when Steve turned back he was naked; naked and hard, and fragrant with lust, and Steve wanted nothing more than to fling him over onto his face, climb onto his back and shove inside.

"Christ, Steve," Bucky whined, fists clawing up the blankets that had been taut and smooth half an hour ago, "Look at you..." he reached for Steve's prick with shaking fingers, though his grip was anything but shy. "Knot makes this thing look three times bigger." He shivered suddenly, gripped hard as his back arched up from the bed, like Steve's prick was the only anchor he had in the world. "You gotta give me this, I'm dyin'," he whined.

"You're not dyin'," Steve managed through his teeth as he rolled down to trap his prick against Bucky's between their bellies. "Just horny." But even as he frotted in close and hard, he could tell it wasn't going to be enough, not like it had been before, when all Steve's runt-heat had needed was a few fingers, and all Bucky's beta-heat had needed was a sweaty fist to thrust into. This was bigger than before – hungrier, harder than the tame little heats they'd both come to know. 

From the sudden, canny tilt of Bucky's hips, he knew it too. Before Steve quite realized what had happened, he was slipping low along the crease, catching on the furl of Bucky's hole. It only took another fierce squirm for Buck to get his way of things. Almost. Heat was one thing, but runt though he'd always been, Steve hadn't ever been small in the trousers, and Bucky hadn't ever been much of an ass-man before this. 

There was real pain in Bucky's yelp and flinch now, fright and alarm in the clutch of his hands on Steve's back, shock in his wide grey eyes, and Steve found himself clenching his own eyes shut and counting baseball statistics to resist coming at the hard, rippling pressure around his dick. Just the tip was in, but even that much was blindingly good, or would have been if Bucky hadn't been panting and shivering beneath him.

"You... jerk," Steve managed, stroking Bucky's hair from his face. "Now you gonna let me help you the right way?"

"This is the right way," Bucky gulped out, rolling his hips just a little and making them both see stars. "You try and stop now, and I'll pop you in the mouth, Steve, just..." he swallowed and rolled his hips again, sliding the tight, clutching ring of heat just a little further along Steve's cock, "just go slow, okay?"

"Hand wouldn't hurt," Steve tried, but his hips were already tilting back, pulling free just enough to tuck in again, a little farther than before. "Could open you up that way, tie you with fingers, and then-"

"Right in the mouth, Steve, I swear to God dammit right there, oh Jesus yes..." Bucky wheezed as Steve hunched down a little more for better traction. Suddenly the clench around Steve's prick dissolved into a grasping pull, a gush of wet slick easing the way farther, faster, and deeper. He stopped short when he felt his knot, still only half-swollen, shove up tight against Bucky's hole.

He wanted it. Wanted it so badly it actually hurt not to arch his back and shove. He leaned close instead, silenced Bucky's knowing protest with the kind of kiss he'd wanted for ages; all tongue and teeth in a slick, wet tangle. It was perfect, and all too tempting to the unfamiliar thing inside him that knew how easy it would be, that way, to bite, to claim, to knot, to tie, to mate, to breed, and to own this man who was not really his _to_ own, no matter what his heat might make him say. 

There was a sound a little like a sob as their lips came apart, but Steve couldn't say which of them had made it. Instead, he focused on getting his knees up under him, and then pressed back to sit on his heels, taking Bucky's hips in both hands to keep him seated. "Heard this way's best," he lied to the dazed, hungry not-quite-alarm in those grey eyes as he began to move, rolling with his hips as his hands steered Bucky into a building rhythm of pulse and grunt and glide. Bucky's prick was hard and red, drizzling precome along his belly as it bounced against each of Steve's thrusts. "Touch it," he growled, thumbs hooked over the frail arch of Bucky's hips, fingers marking long, hard lines in the curve of his ass. "Touch your cock. Get your come all over me."

"Jesus, Steve," Bucky whined, both his fists wrapping around his prick, so the wet head popped in and out of his grip with every frantic stroke. "You gotta. Please, I need-"

"You don't," he cut, as much to himself as to Bucky, "You don't need to tie, you just want to." Another shove of his hips, knot swelling even as he felt Bucky's body trying to yield to it, to draw it all the way inside and trigger the breeding release they both craved. "You're gonna come for me like this though," he said, pulling back again, almost out, almost free, so he could have all the farther to slide back in. "Because I want you to, because I want you, and you want to be good for-"

Bucky shouted then, shouted and came, ropes of his come flying up along Steve's belly and chest, his channel pulsing and rippling around Steve's prick, hardly any resistance left at the frantic press of Steve's knot. He flinched back – not far, because Bucky's legs had clamped tight around his waist, but just enough to grab his own knot in his hand and squeeze a hard circle behind it. It was rough, a brutal shock of hurtwantyes that rocked from Steve's balls, up his spine to his eyes and back again, but it was enough to start him coming, prick pulsing and jerking inside Bucky's body until he pulled loose and loomed over the man to paint the rest along his flushed, sweaty skin; the only claim he dared to make, not half the mark he really wanted to leave.

Bucky pulled Steve close as his release began to slow, trapping his prick in the slick mess between them, murmuring his name over and over while they both shivered with sensation. He fell silent and asleep before Steve had quite finished coming, going boneless in Steve's arms, still panting on the rough army blankets, glazed eyes sliding closed, dazed smile haunting his softening face. It was like his orgasm and the release of his heat had cut loose the looming fear that had robbed Bucky of peace since they'd all trooped into the camp a week ago. 

He clung to Steve even in his sleep though, limbs stubbornly twined, pressed so close as to make it all but impossible to wipe either of them clean. Not that Steve tried particularly hard. He liked the smell of himself on Bucky's skin, how it almost canceled the chilly metallic reek of the HYDRA prison factory that still lingered in his pores, as if it could wash that horror away from his dearest, oldest, only friend, leaving only himself in its place. 

Steve liked the smell of Bucky on his own skin for far more selfish reasons. Reasons he didn't feel like explaining when, two hours later, Peggy came back with the medical team Bucky had been dodging all week, and asked Steve to hold the sleeping omega while they got their look at him. 

He had to resist the impulse to growl every time one of them touched him, but Steve knew it was the only way they were going to find out what had happened. And if he was honest – and he did try to be honest, -- Steve would have killed any of the medics for trying to touch Bucky that way if he hadn't been right there to protect him, to soothe him when he whimpered, to murmur praise in his sleeping ear every time he settled on Steve's command. And if Peggy hadn't been right there talking Steve down while the exam was going on, Steve might have done murder all the same. Shamed as he was to realize it, there was no denying that the alpha in him had made a claim Steve was more than ready to defend, no matter whether he had any right to it or not.

Finally, when they'd collected all they felt they could under Steve's glower, the medics slunk away. Peggy stood from the campaign desk then, and smoothed her trousers with not-quite steady hands and a smile that didn't hide the suppression headache Steve knew she had to be getting from spending so long in his tent. "You and the Sergeant are relieved of duty for the rest of the week Steven," she said, turning to the desk and shaking out a soft looking blue blanket. This she held up, waiting for Steve's nod before she approached the bed to drape it over the two of them.

"You'll be expected to stay in quarters, and if either of you turn up in the company showers or the mess tent, you can expect to deal with the MP's," she added sternly, then spoiled the effect by ruffling Steve's hair despite his reflexive warning growl. "There have been some volunteers asking to bring you two your food. Part of your rescue count -- Jones and Morita, omegas both. I assume you'll be all right with this?"

Steve swallowed. "Omegas? From the prison? But you said-"

Her face pinched with dislike. "Neither of them white. Apparently that's what spared them the breeding camps. Schmidt thought them good enough to work to death, but no more." 

Steve had to bury his face in Bucky's hair and just breathe for a moment at that, just take in the scent of them both, alive and mostly intact, and _together_ , not dying in pieces an ocean apart and all alone. He wanted Schmidt in his reach right then almost more than he wanted anything in the world. But it passed in a few heartbeats, and the living curl of Bucky's sigh on his collarbone.

Peggy's hand brushed Steve's hair again, and he shivered, glad that she carried no ranking odor right now. "I can bring your food if you'd rather," she said, voice gentle, but laden with a trace of pain she couldn't hide from Steve's hearing. It would only get worse for her the oftener she came back.

"No," he muttered, dark curls coarse and damp against his lips. "They can do it. It's fine, just... Peggy, could you please..."

"Of course, Steven. I'll go at once." She understood, of course, knew better than to take offense. Underneath the jealous relief, Steve was pathetically grateful to Peggy's good sense as she gave his shoulder one last pat, then turned to go. "Sleep well, dear."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Figured resolving only one of the cliffhangers was a bit too Bait And Switch for my tastes, so... here. Have another chapter. Hope you liked it.
> 
> Thanks to those still reading along and letting me know what you think.


	8. The Drowning Man

Thor carries Steve upstairs while Tony distracts Bruce and Clint helps Agent Coulson get dressed. The man's weight is not too much, but his size makes gentleness a challenge until Thor thinks to brace the Captain's body across his, head against his right shoulder, legs tucked against his left hip in the swaddling sling of the last clean blanket. One long arm drapes limply over Thor's shoulder, and breath warms his throat with soft, wet puffs. He had often carried Loki thus asleep when they both were younger and less terribly wise, and for all his bulk, the Captain is not so great a burden. 

Dr. Banner makes a good effort to constrain his displeasure at this arrangement, but he is plainly aware that, even if he were not already occupied with Tony, he is not strong enough to carry the unconscious Captain without resorting to his transformation. They none of them want that, and so Thor takes his time with the arrangement, letting the others outstrip his pace.

Natasha, not fooled, walks at Thor's elbow, one small hand on the Captain's bare foot, by way of comfort, reassurance, steerage, or all three as they follow the team at a distance. "You all right with all this?" she asks him, voice a low curl beneath Tony's banter with Clint and Agent Coulson ahead. "I know none of this is normal for you..."

"You speak to the way some Midgardian men may bear children?" Thor asks in the same tone, his smile as warm as he can make it. "It is not the way with Asgardians, no, but this does not trouble me overly. There are many ways of getting young among the people of the nine realms. Some I have seen make the ways of Midgard seem simple by comparison." 

He is thinking of Jotunheim here, where there are neither males nor females, only those Jotun who choose to carry life, and those who choose only to take it. And he is thinking of Loki, and of strange, heated fits of near-madness, and of powerful, wild-blooded children whom some might call monsters, but never where the royal family can hear the murmur. 

On Asgard it is believed this strange twist in humanity arose from those Jotun left behind on the Midgard once the Allfather's armies had stopped the Giants' eradication of human women, and drove the would-be conquerors back to their own world. Thor does not know just how the matter is explained upon Midgard, but the fact stands that at some point or other, humanity very nearly died for want of women, and that men like Tony and like Steven somehow adapted to fill the need. 

"Right," Natasha quirks a smile at him as Tony herds the other four into the elevator, leaving the pair of them to wait for its return. "You're a Fertility God."

Thor chuckles. "Among other things." Then the Captain shifts, restive in his arms, and Thor hefts him just a little closer, not questioning the tender urge at all as he rocks on his heels and presses his lips against the sweaty crown of Steven's forehead. "I did not know he was inside that box," he says when the man settles again. "I would not have trapped him inside such a place, had I-"

"No," Natasha cuts him off at once, bright curls bouncing against her chin as she shakes her head. "Don't do that to yourself, Thor. Steve knew what he was asking for, and he had his reasons for wanting it. Whatever those reasons were, this is on Steve, not you."

It is truth, but cold comfort for all of that. Especially when Thor considers Steven's sunken, shadowed eyes, kitten-soft breaths, and the way he feels as light and brittle in his arms as firewood. "I do not understand what reason there could be," he admits as the elevator doors slide apart again. "That he should choose a thing that so clearly pained him over what his nature so clearly preferred. I cannot fathom it."

Natasha gives him a look; sidelong and a bit sorrowful. "Fear makes people do strange things," she says, in a way Thor understands for an invitation to inquire no farther. 

But Thor has been warned in vain to silence by more fearsome Goddesses in his time, and the Widow's forbidding glance is but a distant chilly glimmer of Freya's terrible scowl, even as the threat of her raised hand would be but a tickle to such corrections as Sif has dealt him in days past. He considers the question for long enough that the doors shut behind them, but still must protest. "Steven is the equal of any man on Midgard for might," he says at last. "His body is strong, and he is potent and healthy. What has he to fear from such a natural urge as this one?"

Natasha sighs, and shakes her head. "Jarvis, please remind me to have the 'male privilege' conversation with Thor later on." Then she turns on Thor with a level, hard stare. "You've never been raped, have you?"

"Raped?" He blinks, hands curling tighter around the Captain's ribs and knees. 

"Forced to have sex when you didn't want to."

"Yes, I know the word," Thor frowns. "And of course not. None would dare lay hands upon me uninvited and think to draw even one breath the more."

"Of course not." Her generous mouth twists into a sharp, sour smile, and the knowing, goading glint in her eyes answers the riddle for him. "Lucky you."

Thor presses Steven closer to his chest as a flame of wrath twists in his belly. "How- Who would dare to-"

"I don't know," Natasha says, unfolding her arms to caress Steven's ankle again, as though she might need the anchorage as much as the Captain. "But I've learned to see the signs, and Steve shows an awful lot of them. It probably happened when he was smaller, not strong enough to fight. Maybe even when he was a child."

Steven whimpers, stirs against him, and only then does Thor realize how rage has weighted his hands. Natasha gives him another knowing glance when he eases his grip, and her small hand drifts up the length of Steven's shin to pat a brief comfort against Thor's arm. "Nothing you can do about it now, Thor. Just remember, whatever he survived, he _survived_ it. And he's the same person today as he was yesterday, before you knew anything like that had happened to him. Nothing about _Steve_ has changed."

Thor breathes in the words, knowing them for wisdom even as he rankles against them. But living with Loki has given him some measure of experience with uncomfortable truths, and so he keeps his peace as they carry the Captain into his apartments, past the idle wrangling going on between Tony, Clint, and Coulson in the living room, and onward to settle Steven into his bed. Thor's thoughts, though, scrap and snarl like dogs around the repellent idea that any would lay unwelcome hands upon a friend of his.

"It is not certain though," he asks at last, watching Natasha smooth the blankets over Steven's chest with gentle, deadly hands. "This... offense against him, this insult you suspect?"

Her eyes flicker briefly with regret. "If you're asking whether I'm certain something happened to him, the answer is yes, but if you're asking for proof of exactly what it was, then I have none. Cap's personal and medical records were sealed as soon as project Rebirth succeeded, so there's nobody alive now who would know the details."

"Not entirely accurate, agent Romanov," said Coulson from the doorway, his normally calm demeanor as rumpled and undone as his suit. The look of abashed nerves was as unusual to see upon the man as shirtsleeves and bare feet. "Come into the living room," he added, running his tie between his fingers. "There are some things the team should probably know."

Natasha leaves the room at once, slipping past the agent in the doorway without further comment. Thor is less certain, torn between curiosity he knows he ought not to feel, and the futile urge to remain at watch over his shieldbrother's rest. After a long moment under Agent Coulson's patient expectancy, he bends to Steven's ear and murmurs, "Rest, my friend. No harm will come to you while Thor Odinson stands to defend your sleep. This is my oath and my honor; you may rest easy now, Steven. You are safe here."

Only then does he yield to the Agent's suggestion, stepping through the door and letting it be closed behind him. He stays there, however, sets his shoulders to the wood as Coulson joins the others in council on the sofas and chairs that fill Steven's small meet-hall. There are some curious glances, which he meets with a tight smile and no explanation. If it makes him feel better to stand guard over his Shieldbrother's door, Thor feels he owes no explanation of it to anyone.

Nor, it seems after a moment, does anyone disagree.

~*~

"You're safe here, Bucky," Steve whispered, soothing the fretful grimace from Bucky's face with a gentle hand. "You're out, I've got you. I'm here."

The words were as much for himself as anything, and he knew it. Still, Buck settled at Steve's words, as he had every time the twitch of imminent nightmares had dragged Steve out of his shallow napping in the last eight hours. He turned his face into the hollow of Steve's shoulder and sighed into ease with a tiny, moist noise that twisted like a knife under Steve's heart even as it made his prick twitch and his hands ache to hold the man tighter to him.

He'd never been able to talk Bucky's night terrors down before. The Lord knew he'd tried and failed plenty back when he was small, fragile, and too weak to weather so much as a cold night in his own bed alone. He'd learned then to sleep light, and to scramble out of the way when Bucky, always so much bigger than him, started swinging at his ghosts in the night. Steve had always wished then that there was something he could do, but now that there was, now that his Ace scent made the newly minted Ought want to do whatever Steve told him, it just made him feel even more helplessly guilty. Because Bucky hadn't asked for this, hadn't asked for omega status and all that went with it, hadn't asked to be made into something God never meant him to be. Not like Steve had done.

As if sensing his thoughts, Bucky stirred in his arms again. A shifting stretch that rolled its way through a yawn and into a deeper cuddle before it was through. "Mn's adda door," he murmured. Not a fearful tone this time, but not making much sense, either.

"Hmm?" Steve asked, even as the scent of strangers approaching made its way through the heady fugue of their tangled nest. He raised his head, sucked cold air over his tongue as the first tentative knock sounded on the tent frame. Omegas. Two of them, both nulled out, but one of them smelling faintly of a bondmate... probably a Deuce. Also, there was mutton stew. Steve blinked at the sudden flood of information that one sip of breath had given him, startled enough to hardly notice as the instinct to come out of the bed fighting faded away.

"Sir?" one of the Oughts called out. "Are you hungry yet?"

Steve was ready to send them away, ignoring the sudden interest in his belly, but Bucky turned in his arms and called out, "Yeah, Jim. I'm starving. Whaddaya got?"

"Somethin' brown, in brown gravy," came the answer in a new voice as someone started unlacing the door flap. "And potatoes. I think. Could be dumplin's though."

"Dumplings," Bucky scoffed, sitting up enough to grab Steve's pants off the floor and hand them back to him. "What army you been serving in gives you dumplings when they got KP knuckleheads lining up to peel spuds?"

But he was grinning as the pair of Oughts entered the tent, and his smell was happy, calm and welcoming, making it easy for Steve to keep his mind on getting himself covered decently instead of wanting to chase them off as quick as possible. The pair of them stopped just inside the tent, the shorter one turning to lace up the flap while the other set the covered mess pots on the campaign desk and turned to offer up his bared wrist to Steve. "Private Gabriel Jones, Captain," he said, staring low and to the side as Steve stepped close and took hold of the offered wrist to bring it to his nose. "It's an honor, Sir." 

There was a subtle tension in the limb, a tremble so fine even Steve's enhanced senses could barely pick it up, but all he could smell on the omega's skin was a nervy kind of excitement – more flattering than threatening. Steve swiped his tongue along the tendons, and felt the tension bleed away at once. Jones looked up with a grin so wide and blinding that Steve couldn't help returning it.

"Thanks for coming, Private," he said as he let the man go and stepped aside so he could get to Bucky's side with the bucket of water and roll of towels he had under his other arm. The other omega stepped into his spot, shoving up the sleeve of his sweater to show the red ring of a bite mark on his forearm even as he held his wrist up to Steve's inspection. His wariness was immediately understandable, as up close Steve could suddenly smell that the man who'd put that mark there hadn't been a beta at all.

"Lieutenant Montgomery Falsworth," the man said, using the British f in his pronunciation of the rank, but no trace of accent elsewhere in the name. Steve glanced the Ought over, noting the conspicuous lack of any rank insignia with a raised eyebrow. "Not me, my Ace," he explained, turning his arm so Steve could bring the mark closer to his nose. "I'm Private James Morita, Sir. Monty wanted me to tell you he'd like to meet you properly once the Sergeant is feeling better."

Then Steve remembered glimpsing the ragged British uniform in the crowd of prisoners on the long trek back to Allied territory, remembered hearing the clipped lilt of the man's voice relaying Steve's orders to the mob, always one or two fires over, or a couple squads back or forward on the road. A sensible distance for one alpha to keep from another in a high risk situation where power struggles could bring an enemy down on their heads. Now, though, they were in camp; safe, fed, and rested. Now was a time when one Ace could prove something on another at no more cost than a night in the brig, or a reprimand from command. Less than that, even, if the camp had a boxing ring.

"Sure," Steve nodded, letting the thin, wiry arm go politely untasted. "But tell him I'm not interested in any trouble." 

Morita's eyes crinkled up tight in a grin. "He doesn't want trouble either, Sir," he said, laying a file folder on Steve's desk next to the dishes. "Just wants to have a drink with a guy who punched out Hitler over two hundred times, is all."

Steve groaned and hid his face in his hands, and Bucky hooted with laughter. Then the laughter abruptly died, and Bucky sat up in the bed. "Wait, you didn't really, did you?"

"No, Bucky, I didn't really punch out Hitler," Steve sighed, rolling his eyes. "I _pretended_ to punch out an actor named Mike so the kiddies would get their folks to buy war bonds." He stooped to pick his under shirt out of the tangle on the floor and turned it right side out with a snap. "What, you think we'd still be fighting this war if I got a chance to line one up on der Fuhrer himself?"

"How would I know what's possible anymore?" Bucky grumbled back, taking a damp cloth from Jones and rubbing at his face. "Steve Rogers I knew sure woulda tried though."

"Get Hitler inside my arm's reach, I promise you, he still will," Steve promised. "And it won't take two hundred hits for him to stay down, either."

Morita appeared at Steve's elbow with a plate of the stew, and Steve's stomach immediately conscripted all his attention from the verbal sparring with a growl all four of them could hear. "Looks fine," he said, and made himself nod the man on toward the bed, where Bucky was wringing out his washcloth in the basin. "You hungry, Bucky?"

"This is yours, Sir," Morita answered. "We got broth for the Sarge. Stew's too heavy for this early in, he won't want it."

That caught Bucky's attention from his scrubdown, and he frowned. "What? Why not? I'm starvin'."

Jones smirked and finished bundling the clothes off the floor. "Think about it, Sarge; where does the food go, and what would you rather have there right now?"

Steve felt himself flushing straight down to his toes at the appalled glance Bucky threw his way when the penny dropped, but he nodded all the same. "Well let him smell it anyway," he said, hoping that Bucky's heat might be a short, weak one and mostly over now. "He can have mine if it's what he wants." 

Morita shrugged and did as Steve told him, but sure enough, Bucky waved the food off after one sniff. "Yup, that's yours all right," he said, and returned to his bath with a grimace. Steve could tell Morita was trying not to look smug when he brought the stew back to Steve, but he wasn't trying all that hard.

"What's in the file, Gabe?" Bucky asked as Steve sat to begin eating.

Jones looked up from the mess cans with perfect innocence. "It's marked for the Captain, so I wouldn't know, would I?" Morita made a snorting noise, and Jones glared at him until Bucky seconded it, louder. 

Steve rolled his eyes and finished chewing his food. "It's okay, Private. If it was eyes only, Agent Carter would have brought it herself. It's Sergeant Barnes' medical reports, isn't it?" 

Jones had the grace to look at least a bit abashed when he nodded, and Steve was glad to see it. Gossip was going to run quick now they were in camp, and the silent rift between the 107th who hadn't been captured and those who had followed Steve back from the HYDRA base wouldn't last for long. The more traction he had over who said what about him and Bucky, the better, and he had Gabe Jones figured for the sort who'd snoop in that file out of concern for his fellow prisoner, not because he was looking for something to win him bragging points at the mess.

"So?" Bucky prompted in a precisely careless voice as Jones went to hand him his cup. "What's it say? How long do I got to live?"

"That depends on how patient Captain America is with your sass, I'd say," Jones came right back, but the glance he shot Steve was a query, not a joke. Steve nodded to it, glad of the chance to leave the file closed on the desk for awhile longer. "Well, the short version is that you still show some beta traits, but you're pretty much one of us now," Jones said, "You really are an omega."

Bucky swallowed hard, then gave a shrug. "Fine. Tell me something I don't know." 

"You just hit puberty?"

Bucky spit his broth, choking. Steve was half out of his chair before a forbidding glare from Bucky drove him back to his own plate. "I ain't no kid!"

"Easy, Barnes," Morita said, perching on the bunk next to Bucky and slipping an arm around his back. "Just means your body's still settling, is all. Still figuring out what to do with itself now things are different. Won't know whether you'll be able to take the nullifiers, until you're farther along through."

"How much farther along?"

"Bucky," Steve put in, drawing worried grey eyes his way. "They don't let kids take nulls till they've had at least six heats at two month intervals." That was why Steve had never used the drugs before -- his irregular cycle, low weight, and the cost of the treatments put him right out of luck. The first time he'd tried to enlist, it had been on the strength of the rumor that the army was giving omegas the nulls for free if they wanted them. Turns out the rumor had been true, for all the good it had done him.

"Alright, so it'll be awhile," Bucky said after a moment's glare. "What else?"

Jones snorted and sat on Bucky's other side. "Just that you're mean, rude, randy, and underweight -- nothin' we didn't already know. And that if you don't wanna get discharged home with a litter in your kit, we need to teach the Captain here how to use an Ace-sized Pro." With a flourish worthy of a sideshow Carny, Jones then produced a familiar oblong tin with a familiar cartoon duck, and brandished it between two fingers.

"Oh geez," Steve groaned as Bucky started to laugh. "I know what to do with a rubber, guys."

Then all three of them were laughing, and Morita was shaking his head. "Agent Carter told us you'd say that. Said we could give you the demo, or she can come and do it. Your choice."

Steve dropped his spoon at the threat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the tenor begins to change, murderberries. Thanks to those who've stuck with me this far, and doubly so if you commented to share your thoughts. Gracias!


	9. Headstrong

"Hermaphrodite," Tony repeats, all incredulous eyebrow. "Really? Because technically, aren't we calling the kettle black a little bit here, Agent?"

Phil gives the eyebrow right back. "Can _you_ sire a child on another Omega, Stark? Because Rogers could if he wanted to." That wins the startled blink he expects, and Phil takes some pleasure in pushing the point a little farther. "According to every bit of medical data we've got on him, Captain Rogers is remarkably fertile as both alpha and omega, and is undoubtedly more fertile with women than most other men alive today."

"So why hasn't he had a heat in all this time if he's so damn quick?" Stark challenges, cross-legged on the floor at Banner's feet.

"Because he has voluntary control over his status," the doctor answers, quelling Stark's fidgets with a hand on his shoulder. Not a heavy grip, but a warning made plain in the gentle chafing of thumb against throat. "It was one of the best-documented elements of the original serum, and the one characteristic I most wanted to replicate with my own experiments, actually. Obviously, I got the meta-alpha status shift right, but the control... not so much."

Interesting. Phil shares a coded glance with Natasha, and then files the detail away with a promise to update Banner's file later. "The Captain can decide what status, if any, to activate at any given time," he resumes, knitting the group with a sweeping glance from Banner, around to Thor. "Outside of combat situations, he has preferred to present as a null ever since we woke him up-"

"Except when Stark's all up in his grill and he goes over all alpha and snarly," Clint snickers until Natasha pokes him in a nerve cluster to shut him up.

"We have only very limited records on the Captain from before his crash," Phil hurries on before Stark can pick up the argument. "But there was one close associate of his who kept fairly detailed records on him at the time -- no it's not your father, Stark, we already gave you everything we had of his." Stark shuts his mouth with a huff, and Phil continues, trying to ignore the discomfort of openly revealing data that is, technically, above even his clearance level. But Phil had been read into the file on Director Carter's notes when the Captain agreed to join the Avengers, and in light of what he'd found in that shipping container when he answered Stark's call to assembly that afternoon, Phil can see no better way forward than this. 

"According to those records," he says. "The Captain used to remain null while in camp or on base back then too. He only reverted to alpha status when in the field, on leave, or when his omega was in cycle."

As expected, that causes a stir. 

"Wait, _his_ omega?" Banner asks, hand stilling on Stark's bare shoulder.

"Yeah, since when was Captain-Most-Eligible-Alpha-In-America mated?" Stark rolls over him, incensed. "The newsreels woulda been all over that, what with all the 'good soldiers bond their omegas and stay faithful' propaganda going on back then."

"Not if his omega was in service," Clint puts in with a knowing glance at Phil. "Especially if he was serving in Cap's own squad. Brass wouldn't dare reveal Cap's Achilles' heel like that if there was a chance the soldier could be captured and used against him."

"No way. Bondmates aren't deployed together-"

"They were back then," Clint cuts off Stark's protest with a wave of his hand. "That was the first draft that took omegas in, and the Brass didn't have a good idea how to work them into the mix yet. All they had then was the nullifier drugs -- which were still brand new -- and an enemy that held half of Europe trying to create a super race in every way they could." He looks around the silent room with an uncomfortable shrug. "Guy I knew as a kid was in one of the tank columns that liberated a Belgian breeding camp. Used to tell us brats stories about those chained up, drugged up omega POWs he saw there. Trying scare us straight when we were being little assholes."

"Obviously it didn't take on you," Natasha murmurs, bumping his shoulder with hers. Phil quashes a smile as he watches Clint bump her back, harder.

"Breeding camps?" Thor's rumble echoes a threatening growl from the clouds outside the window. His eyes are narrowed and hard. "Tell me what you mean by this." The ominous tone of his voice makes it plain that Thor already has it figured out though.

Phil manages not to shiver. Just. "It was an imprisonment practice by the losing faction of the war Steve fought in. War crime on a massive scale, and not something the human race will ever be proud of."

"Yeah, Sparky, that war had some pretty ugly stuff; genocide, slavery, carpet bombing, fission weapons, all that jazz enlightened species aren't supposed to enjoy. A real downer." Stark's cheer is hollow and forced, and painful enough to watch that Phil cuts the man off.

"I will brief you on it later if you want me to," Phil promises, hoping to stave off the imminent derailment.

"See that you do," Thor says, and thunder puts an exclamation point on the end of that quiet declaration.

"Anyway," Clint shivers back into his sass before anyone else has shaken the creeps off. "The point is, it's obvious Cap was bonded before. I mean look how he is around girls. How he doesn't like to get closer than handshake range to any omega if he can help it. Hell, he yields to the Doc all the time when we're in the tower, even when Bruce is too distracted to notice Steve tucking tail."

Banner looks profoundly uncomfortable at that, but Natasha speaks up first. "It's true, Bruce. Watching you two trying to show each other your bellies all the time has been getting kind of ridiculous."

The glasses come off, Banner's tell for exasperation, especially when his nose-pinch of embarrassment follows. "It doesn't make any sense to me. Steve's the Captain, he's the team leader, and he's clearly more alpha than I'll ever be even when he tries not to show it. I can't figure out why he keeps..." he waves a hand, " _doing that_. I never asked for dominant status."

"The fact that you're all but denning with the omega who owns the building he lives in might possibly have something to do with it," Natasha suggests with mild irony. 

Stark makes a rude noise. "Yeah, 'cause him being a closeted omega wouldn't change _that_ dynamic up or anything. Omegas share territory and pack presence all the fucking time!"

"Don't touch my stuff," Thor puts in, still not smiling. "You said those words to me when first we met, Anthony Stark, and I have heard you say them since."

"You, big guy, are not an omega. Steve is, or he would be if he'd just come off his repression and-"

"He hasn't been an omega since Project Rebirth succeeded," Phil cuts Stark's equivocations off, not nearly as harsh as he'd like to be. "Director Carter made it plain that Captain Rogers never once expressed as an omega while he was in service."

"What?" Stark blinks. "Why wouldn't he? I mean they already made him a Captain anyway, and he had a whole pack of Commandos blood-loyal to him for like two years. So why wouldn't he want the home-vibe going on to back that up? That tough-guy act couldn't be all-"

Natasha isn't the only one to roll her eyes at Stark's surprise, but she's the first to speak. "Oh for fuck's sake, Stark, you're smarter than this! It was never an act! Steve learned to be tough to survi-"

Thunder crashes again, startling them all to silence.

"Your pardon, my friends," Thor nods, still not looking any happier as he pins Phil with a Prince's glower. "I believe Agent Coulson promised to explain what had befallen our Shield Brother in his time, and this is a tale which I greatly wish to hear."

It takes almost more nerve than Phil has to stare the God of Thunder down and shake his head, but he manages it. "That's the Captain's story to tell, not mine," he says. "But what I can tell you is that the Captain's pre-serum medical records report him as very nearly a natural null, due to his poor health, and..." he hesitates, all but feeling beneath his feet the line he's about to take them all across, and the potential destruction of his fragile friendship with a man he's looked up to all his life. But he knows this team, and he can see from their faces that they will have this story, whether Stark hacks it out of SHIELD records, or they dig it out of Steve with the brutal, caring inefficiency of the well-meaning. They will have it one way or the other. And better the Captain blames Phil for the breach of his trust than the team, in the end. Handlers can be replaced.

"Understand, please, that I'm telling you all this _only_ because it's relevant to what you discovered today," Phil says. "Because as the handler for this team, I can see no way forward from this but that you all should know at least something about why Captain Rogers has resisted his omega nature this long, despite the obvious consequences to his health, and why he went to such extreme lengths to conceal his heat from the team. It would be tempting to blame it all on old fashioned morals and outdated notions of omega social status and rights -- he did sleep through the sexual revolution, after all -- but I'm asking you all right now to do him and yourselves the courtesy of not thinking that. The stability of the team hinges on its omegas and its alpha, and if you want him to trust any of you... trust any of us going forward, then this cannot be made into a joke."

"Why is everyone looking at me?" Stark whines, then flinches as a paper football bounces off his forehead. 

"Nobody's busting on Cap for this," Clint promises, hunched just a little closer into Natasha's shadow than before. "So what's the 'and', Boss?"

Phil takes a breath, settles his hands behind him so he won't fidget. " _And_ there is a private report in Director Carter's sealed personnel file, about an altercation between herself and an alpha recruit who had been in the running for Project Rebirth along with Rogers shortly before the experiment ran. There were MPs involved, and according to the Director, the recruit was not seen again after the unit commander, Colonel Chester Phillips interviewed him. The official record lists Private Gilmore Hodge as missing in action, but Carter implies the man was never shipped overseas at all. Rogers' file also contains a reprimand from Colonel Phillips for failing to report for medical treatment on that same night."

Someone whistles through their teeth in the appalled silence that follows. Phil's focus being on Thor's simmering temper, he doesn't see who, but it's Banner who speaks up first. "So Steve's first time with an alpha was most likely an attack. Then he goes through Rebirth and fights a war with his bonded mate but wakes up without him..." he shakes his head and pulls Stark a little closer to his knees. "Bond survivorship is no joke. I've heard of alphas who don't make it through losses like that."

"There's some debate on the topic of whether the Captain intended to survive it or not," Phil allows. 

"Barnes, right?" Stark crashes in, looking distracted and far too canny. Phil gives him a carefully bland face while mentally cursing Howard Stark's fannish devotion. Stark isn't buying though. "Couldn't have been Peggy Carter who bonded with Cap, because she had kids with someone else a few years after he went down in the ice. But Barnes died before Steve's crash. Like, _just_ before, right? So it had to be him."

"I never heard of this Barnes," Natasha muses, her eyes calculating. Stark shifts eagerly, rising to the unspoken query, but she takes one look at Phil's face, reads, as usual, far more than he wants her to, and cuts the genius off briskly. "But unless he's still alive today, it doesn't really help us, does it?"

Stark deflates, leaning back into Banner's knees with a shake of his head. "Shit... I guess it doesn't." He peers at the bedroom door with a mournfully longing expression Phil can understand entirely too well, and gives a sigh. "Shit. No wonder Steve's been so gunshy about bonding with the team; his alpha side lost Barnes, his beta side lost Carter, and his omega side nearly got raped in boot camp. It's like a trifecta of suck. Only thing that would make it worse is if he lost a kid too."

And no, Phil doesn't flinch. He doesn't blink, doesn't glance away or give so much as a micrometer of suggestion, but Stark's eyes still open shocked and wide. "There wasn't a kid too, was there?"

"Army policy at the time was to send pregnant soldiers home on family discharge," Phil temporizes, mentally planting himself over that last line and bracing to fight, to distract, and to derail with every ounce of guile he possesses. "Even if the Captain had neglected to report it, the Commandos were very closely monitored, and were frequently in medical care for various wounds gotten in the field. There's no record of a conception within the unit at all."

That's when the bedroom door cracks open, revealing Steve Rogers, looking more defeated than Phil had ever imagined seeing him. "It's all right," he says as Thor moves aside to let him out, "you might as well tell them the rest."

~*~

The whole valley smelled of fear, which only proved they were close to something HYDRA didn't want them to see.

Zola, the ratty little butcher who'd tortured Bucky, had started experimenting with airborne pheromones lately to manipulate his captives and soldiers. It made raids more exciting for the Howling Commandos, Steve would give him that, but the only thing it seemed to really win HYDRA strategy-wise was more of their men running away and fewer surrendering or fighting to the death when things started to blow up. Which might've been the point, Steve allowed, if they were starting to have trouble keeping their numbers up.

Still, it did make it easy to tell when they were right on top of a HYDRA installation, even when they'd stumbled upon it entirely by accident. The Commando's mission this time had been to take out a railroad bridge through a steep alpine valley, which they had done. Then to recon and establish precise coordinates for a rumored fuel or munitions depot in the foothills, which they'd also done. And finally, to scout out a location for ambushing the tank column that was scheduled to roll through this area a week later, which they'd done three times over, just for flexibility's sake. Tripping over the Red Skull's bootlaces on their way home again was just an unexpected bonus.

"Map it out and report it, I say," Monty suggested from behind the field glasses. "We've used up most of our ordnance on the bridge already, and we're still a solid three days march from our extraction point."

"And four days ahead of schedule, with none of us injured this time," Steve replied, taking the glasses from him to scan the valley again, counting black helmets and tallying odds in his head. "The way the Skull goes through bases, HYDRA might not still be here when we get back around to it. Wish I knew what they were up to down there..."

"Cap."

The leaden tone of Bucky's voice drew Steve off his belly and back from the ridge at once, Monty just a step behind him. All three of the omegas stood together, shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, white around the eyes, and grey around the mouths, and it was all Steve could do to quell his desire to snatch Bucky to him at the sight. But he restrained himself like he had a thousand times before. Buck would let him know when touching was ok, when Steve was allowed to take care of him or protect him, and if it was actually less often now that Steve wasn't tiny, then he didn't have the right to complain. He'd asked for his status to change – Bucky hadn't.

"What is it?" he clipped, trying not to feel jealous of the bonded pair as Monty lifted an arm and Morita slipped under it like he wanted to be nowhere else in the world.

"It's..." Bucky swallowed hard, cut his eyes at the other two and shivered. 

"Omegas, Sir," Jones put in, voice threaded with barely-suppressed whine. "They got Oughts down there. A lot of them. And they ain't doin' so good."

Steve cursed and turned on his heel, but Bucky lunged after him, dragging against his arm until Steve eased up let himself be stalled. "There's more, Steve," he said, voice thick, like he wanted to choke up or gag. "I can smell that doc. You know the one, and... and me. I can smell... it's almost like _I'm_ down there too. Like I heated up and fucked my way around the whole valley, but I ain’t ever been here before. Not even when that Nazi quack was..." He swallowed hard, choking whatever was in his throat safely away.

Alarmed, Steve glanced at Jones, who was already nodding, looking chilled and too small in the gathering twilight. Steve held out an arm to the man, pure comfort and nothing else, and the Private didn't even pretend to hesitate before tucking under it as Bucky took up Steve's other side with a shiver, but no sign of hostility toward the other omega. That alone was proof how bad things were. Bucky was a bit of an ass about letting every ought in range know that Steve was occupied territory, even when he himself was off cycle and not remotely interested.

"It's a hospital, Steve," Bucky murmured, "Just like the other one, and he's got them in there on tables and in cages and cut open and pumped full of drugs and who knows what and we gotta-"

"Shh, I know," Steve murmured, rubbing circles against the back of Bucky's blue serge jacket as he watched Dernier, looking grim and horrified, slip back over the ridgeline and hurry toward them. "I know. We’ll do something about it. We have to do something." 

Jones slipped away to the beta’s side at once, rattling questions low and taut in the gloom, and obviously not comforted by the answers he was getting. Steve’s French still wasn’t up to speed — he’d been relying on Jones, and on Dernier’s limited English to bridge the gap -- but he could tell enough from the Frenchman’s expression, and from how he was all but buzzing with destruction where he stood. Whatever he’d spotted during his brief recon, it was anything but good.

A glance at Montgomery's face showed Steve exactly the same helpless determination he was feeling himself. They both wanted to take their omegas and run just as much as they wanted to run straight down into that valley and rain hell on whatever torturers they found there until the captive omegas were sheltered once more and safe. And they both knew the smell in the air, more complex than either of their noses could really parse out, was probably affecting them just as deeply as it was the squad's omegas. This was going to be harder than it looked, whether the Red Skull was there, or not.

Jim Morita had his eyes closed, his face half turned into the filthy canvas of his alpha’s jacket as if trying to filter out the smell Bucky described with his own mate’s scent. Bucky, silent and close against Steve’s side, was anything but still, his restless hands plucking at Steve’s uniform even while the unspoken memories shivered him to his bones. Steve was afraid to even glance at him, knowing Bucky would shuck Steve’s arm and charge headlong into danger if he even began to suspect Steve pitied him, or wanted to keep him from harm. 

“Definitely a hospital, Cap,” Jones reported as Dernier led him close and all but shoved him against Steve’s side again. “But Jacques said there’s something else going on down there too. Some kind of factory setup on the other side.”

“The pheromones?” Steve wondered, and forced himself not to tighten his grip as Bucky flinched. Across the copse, Dugan appeared between ancient, towering pines with a bloodthirsty grin under his mustaches that didn’t do anything at all to ease Steve’s growing suspicion that he was about to lose control of the situation.

“C'est possible,” Dernier agreed, pausing to spit in the direction of the installation before reaching for a twig and crouching to scratch in the dirt. “Mais ce n’est pas tout. Regardez ici.” They all leaned close to watch, Morita stirring enough to dig some matches out of his kit and strike a light for them all to huddle around.

“Those are tanks, by the way,” Dugan said without preamble as he joined the group, pointing to three large squares in the shelter of the wall that Steve had been hoping were outbuildings or sheds of some kind. He shouldered his way in between Jones and Steve, and toed an additional long rectangle in behind them. “And that’s some kinda hangar. Couldn’t get an angle to see if there was anything in it, but I figure with no runway out of there for it to land or take off with, it’ll be something interesting one way or the other.”

Steve stared hard at the diagram on the ground, noting far too many blind corners and dead ends. “And if it isn’t there now, we gotta look out for it turning up on us,” he murmured, glancing around the ring of pale, determined faces. “Radio towers?” he asked, hoping the valley would work to their advantage.

Dugan’s grin turned sharp and satisfied, and with his boot drew a ragged curve just behind Dernier’s pattern. “That’s the sheer hill they’re backed up against, right? So that,” he hocked and spat just a few inches athwart of his new line, then nodded at the damp shine, “Is a tower they built up on the point some hundred and fifty feet above it. Got a cosy little operator’s house up there, and cable running straight down the rock face into the camp. And _that,_ he spat again, just behind the first, “is the biggest damn pine tree I seen in my whole life. Betcha if she fell down just right, she’d take out the tower, the operator’s hut, and bring half the hillside down into the camp with her.” 

The others were beginning to grin now, the omegas still nervy, but eagerness for the fight rising in them as the fear bled into outrage, the betas sharp and ready to rain hell the instant he gave leave. Only the other alpha was subdued and neutral, avoiding any trace of challenge to Steve's decision even as his scent spiraled tight and red with potential violence in the cold mountain air.

They were going in, on Steve's orders or in spite of them, and it didn’t matter how much Steve might wish for better odds, better intel, or just more ammunition. None of them could walk even one step farther away from what was going on down there. He could go in ahead of his pack, or behind them. Those were his choices. And after the childhood he’d had, Steve had learned a thing or two about making it through on terrible odds… so long as he wasn’t all alone. He gave Bucky’s shoulder one last grateful squeeze, and then crouched low over their makeshift map.

All right," he said, low and sharp as his pack drew in close under the soggy trees. "Count it out, Gentlemen; weapons, ammunition, explosives — what do we have to work with here?"


	10. Too Much To Ask

"I sent the omegas up the hill," Steve says to the hands twined loosely between his spread knees. "It wasn't to keep them away from the hospital... not just for that reason, anyway. Morita was our radio man, and Jones was a genius with shape charges, and Buck was our sharpshooter. I'd have needed them up on that point no matter what their status. They were supposed to cut the power cable to the radio tower, blow the tree, and then provide covering fire for Falsworth and me while Dernier and Dugan stole us another tank."

" _Another_ tank?" Clint cuts in with a laugh. "Did you have a collection going or something, Cap?"

Steve looks up with a grin that might be a little abashed, but isn't the least bit regretful. "Believe it or not, tanks were easier to steal than jeeps. HYDRA's leviathans didn't even need keys, and there were usually at least one or two left drivable after we blew up everything else on the base." He shrugs with one shoulder. "Beat walking home. So long as we blew it up and crippled it before we got near Allied lines, nobody wanted to ask us too many questions."

"Somewhere in Hell," Tony observes with relish as he cuddles forcibly against Steve's shin, "My old man just started cursing you for not bringing him one." It's not as intimate a contact Tony would like, but when Steve took his perch on the coffee table rather than accept the narrow slice of sofa between Clint and Coulson, Tony figured he'd have to be careful how much touching he offered the other omega. Incremental invasion of Cap's long-established hands-off zone seems kinder than Tony's usual blitz-cuddle M.O, and there's no pretending that the man doesn't desperately need human contact, even if he doesn't realize it himself. Tony figures another omega is the least alarming of the options in the room, and he doesn't mind being it.

Steve points the grin down to him, and though it fades a little, he doesn't move away from Tony or try to break the contact between them. "I did bring him one, that first time," he says, nudging back at Tony's shoulder with his knee. "All he did was take it apart and complain how it didn't make sense and shouldn't work at all."

"Engin _eer_ ," Tony says, because that explains everything.

"This _is_ why we can't have nice things," Bruce adds from the easy chair. "Remember the mass spectrometer I used to have in my lab?"

"I'm making it better," Tony sniffs.

"Can we get back to Cap stealing German tanks?" Clint sits forward from his sprawl between Natasha and Coulson to set his beer on the table by Cap's hand. "Because if that's what you call a hobby, I totally wanna party with _you_ , man!"

"You do party with him," Natasha reminds him with a poke in the ribs. "Every time we get the call to Assemble."

"Yeah, but we don't get to ride home in a tank afterward! Not that the Quinjet's not awesome," he equivocates hastily. "But... Tank!"

"No Tanks," Coulson's voice is like a very patient axe blade. 

"But-"

"You just want to joyride over the Financial District," he says in that 'Omega ain't happy, ain't nobody happy' tone that Tony had never quite managed to perfect. "I'm the one who has to do the paperwork afterward, so no, no Tanks." Then he turns his back on Barton's dramatic pout and gives that bland smile of his. "Go on please, Captain Rogers."

Steve chuckles. "Well it wasn't a hobby or anything. And that time we needed one of the tanks to bring the other two down, so..." he falters when he notices Tony watching him, as if he's surprised to find Tony actually paying attention to his 'way back in my time' story. Which Tony totally is, because it's not one of the stories his old man had already told him a million times, and he actually does want to know what happens. Besides, Tony's not actually feral here! He can muster up a show of respect while they talk about the guy's dead bondmate, at least. He offers an encouraging smile and turns to lean his chin on Steve's knee. Baby steps. Baby steps.

"So," Steve recovers after a second, tearing his gaze away from Tony's and returning it to his hands and his memories. "The setup went well. We were all in position by twilight, and I had the field glasses up, watching the hilltop for guards. Gabe and Jim were out of sight at that angle, but I could just see Buck climbing up one of the trees next to the big one we were bringing down. He had a spare undershirt tied to his pack so he could wave it like a flag when they were ready to blow the charge, only..." he swallows, and Tony is far too close to miss the spike of worryfearanguish scent that swirls around whatever it was Steve didn't say.

"He jumped trees at the last minute, didn't he?" Natasha asks into the silence.

Steve flinches. "How'd you know?"

She shrugs and uncoils to slip across the gap and settle onto the table beside him. "It's what I'd have done." Tony feels Steve tense, then soften in surprise as whatever reaction he expects himself to have to Natasha's familiarity fails to materialize. He slips his arm farther to let her settle against it and chuckles. 

Intrigued by this development, Tony rocks on his hips until he can lean against her shin too. "Remind me _never_ to party with _you_ ," he says, not remotely meaning it.

"You'll change that tune come New Year's Eve," she threatens, running her polished claws backward through Tony's already rumpled hair, as if it could be messed up further. He doesn't complain – if his stylist's work can stand up to welding sparks, random grease spurts, and sweating in the Iron Man helmet, it can stand up to a little scritching. Or a lot of scritching, if he's supremely lucky. He hums and rolls his cheek against Steve's knee to give her better access to his ears.

"So your bondmate was in the tree that fell?" he hears Natasha prompt, then Tony can feel every ounce of the tension that had been slowly bleeding out of Steve as he'd told his story return all at once. He can hear the joints of his fingers creak against each other, can smell the surge of grief that underscores the sound, and the expression of baffled confusion Steve puts on to reply is just about the best bluff Tony has ever seen. If Steve could control his scent the way Coulson says he normally can, the illusion would be complete.

"Bondmate?" Steve asks, scanning the room. "Why does everybody seem to think me and Buck were bonded?"

Tony and Natasha both point at Coulson, who looks like he can't decide between sheepish and fascinated. "Agent Carter's memoir made it seem like-" he begins, but Steve's already nodding with a fondly wistful smile, and the sorrow-scent takes on a distant, vin rose quality.

"Yeah, that makes sense, I guess. She always was a romantic underneath the armor plating. But Buck and me..." his nod turns sideways. "We imprinted on each other in the orphanage, and we helped each other out with..." A sudden spike of lust, musky and thick shoots through Steve's scent, and there goes that goddamned gorgeous flush of his again. Tony hikes his arm up over Steve's leg, partially to keep him from running, but mostly to get a better view of the spreading color. He can't help being pleased when Steve allows the encroachment without complaint.

"I would-" he swallows thickly, then sits up, his hands resting on his thighs so that his fingertips just brush Tony's forearm. Almost, maybe a kind of invitation? Tony snuggles closer just in case it is. "I wanted it, wanted that for him and me, but I guess I kind of always had, even back when we both knew better. Peggy knew I was crazy for him, and that he'd do anything for me, and like I said, she had a big soft heart inside her... but it was clear pretty quick that it just wasn't gonna happen."

"Why, Steve?" Bruce leans forward in the chair, his hands steepled under his chin, his eyes brown and soft with sympathy. "I don't understand what's obvious about it. With you carrying each other's imprints, fighting together, anchoring your pack together, and spending his heats together, let alone the obvious emotional connection, I'd think that you two _being_ bonded was the more logical assumption than that you wouldn't be."

Tony thinks of him and Pepper though, and isn't too sure of that. Steve speaks up before he can say so though. "It's because we didn't match. Not like that. Not really."

"How so? Because you're meta-alpha?" Bruce actually looks just a little worried at that, and from the subtle, wary shift in Steve's scent, Tony can tell it worries him too. He slips his hand over Steve's when the soldier shakes his head, and has to suppress a surge of joy when Steve twines their fingers together.

"No. Because Buck was a Deuce – I mean a beta," Steve cuts a glance Clint's way, quick and sorry, then goes on when he gets the forgiving nod. "Not an omega. Not really. He never asked to change his status, never wanted it. Not like I did. He was happy the way he was born, and yeah, he was willing to help me out of the weak little heats I had when I was younger, but he always liked the girls better." He shakes his head, and Tony has to stifle a whine in his throat as Steve's scent print swirls blue and dark again. Natasha leans against Steve's side, her eyes meeting Tony's briefly as she drapes herself over his broad shoulders.

"HYDRA changed him, Doc," Steve goes on after a moment, not looking at either Tony or Natasha, but not brushing them off either. "But not all the way, really, like how the serum changed me... but worse. Even afterward, Bucky was still beta enough to attract girls when he wasn't on cycle. Picked up dates by the handful whenever he could get leave, or a pass off base. He was always like that, even when we were kids, but after he got changed, it was even... more. Needed to prove he could, I guess."

"Don't know what _that's_ like or anything," Tony mutters into the soft cotton of Steve's sleep pants, because he can't keep his mouth shut while the man is sitting there feeling all lost and lonely at him like that. "Didn't make it fair to you though." Or to Pepper, or to Rhodey, or to any of the handy alphas and betas Tony had scooped up and tossed away once he'd reassured himself that he could always make somebody want him, even if love wasn't as certain a thing. He'd grown out of that phase though; grown up, grown a conscience, and stopped propping his sense of self up on other people's emotions. But from the sound of it, Barnes had died before he had the chance to get his brain around the question of what the hell he really _did_ want. Poor bastard probably died still wondering.

Steve gives his fingers a squeeze, but his smile strains at the edges. "Bucky was glad of me when his heats hit and he needed someone he could trust," Steve says, leaning his head down to brush against Natasha's when she butts at him. "And I knew he didn't want anybody else getting at him like that, so I made sure to act like he was mine so the other alphas would keep off. And he was quick enough to run off any Ought who came warming up to me, but outside the warpack bond all my squad shared, he didn't want... well, it just never took, is all."

A shadow falls over them as Thor looms from behind, his eyes wet, bright, and solemn as he smiles down at them. "I hope to be worthy of a friendship and loyalty such as yours, my friend," he says, giving Steve's shoulder a squeeze. "For I know few souls who could bear to but sip at a draught for which they thirsted so deeply, and not grow bitter before long."

"Bucky was my best friend in the world," Steve answers, almost sounding confused. "He knew I'd have done anything to make things right for him once the war was over and we could go home again."

Tony doesn't ask about it – doesn't figure he needs to. He'd seen enough of how Steve's mind works to guess how it would have played out if Bucky hadn't come around; an open minded beta girl who somehow wouldn't feel threatened that her man's best friend lived next door and never took a date of any sex or status home with him. A girl who would take what one man wanted to give her while the other waited for whatever he could get. Waited to be needed, and was wanted only then. It actually hurts, imagining Steve in a life like that, and it makes Tony's chest ache until he has to rub his face in the soft, worn fabric of Steve's sleep pants and swallow hard against the high, tight whine rising into his throat. He doesn't even want to think about children in that kind of home. Half-wanted kids, shuffled between parents who could never be wholly there for them, stretched as they were across gulfs of want and need and hope and resignation. It makes his own father's tepid parenting seem shiny by comparison.

"That's why the Commandos kept going after Zola, isn't it?" Coulson asks softly. "Aside from all the reasons in the reports, you wanted to capture the one who'd changed Barnes so you could figure out how to change him back again."

Steve nods at that, and somehow manages to look at none of them. "Yeah. The whole squad was in on it, and I can't tell you how many times we got close before..." the fingers around Tony's clench briefly, painfully, then ease back as Steve takes a deep breath. "Before Gabe finally collared the creep. So that's why we all shoulda known Bucky wasn't gonna stay up on that ridge that night, not with the hospital, the prisoners, that smell in the air... and sure as hell not once he knew Dernier had spotted Zola in the yard not an hour before."

Another deep breath, and Steve runs his free hand through his hair. "No idea how he managed not to break his fool neck on the way down, but Bucky rode that damn tree to the ground like a rodeo pony. We stuck to the plan – it was all we had, and we didn't know if he was even alive yet. We hit the gates as soon as the crashing started, and distracted the sentries there from the Betas making a dash for the tanks. I heard Buck's gun just a minute after we cleared the main guard tower, and sent Falsworth to find him while I drew the heavier fire away from the hospital."

Tony snorts. "Yep, sounds like a Cap plan to me: set yourself up for a pounding while everyone else runs in circles and gets things done."

Steve scowls and flicked Tony's ear, but still doesn't take his hand away. "Just so happens that it worked," he grouses.

"Yeah, and that _still_ sounds like a Cap plan to me," Tony grins back. "So the captives?"

Steve's face falls, briefly grief stricken before he hardens against the memory. "All dead. Hooked up to a kill switch, though Falsworth said they looked so starved and tortured none of them could have made it back to Allied territory anyway. We couldn't have cared for them. Couldn't even have taken the time to bury them decently, with everything that…" He took a deep breath, and Tony watched him pull up his debriefing face; calmly neutral, as matter-of-fact as if he was relating something he once saw in a movie, not something that clearly still wrung at him from the inside. 

“There was some kind of rocket plane in the hangar. Zola didn’t have a lot of defense at the camp, but what he had was fighting hard, so he got into it and away before we could get control of a cannon and take it out. Morita and Jones both shot it up as it went past, but that wasn’t enough, and the only one who coulda…” he swallows some words, then tries again. “Half an hour, maybe forty minutes, and he could have that valley full of troops, or burning end to end if there was a bomber loaded nearby. We had to blow the camp and just hope we could get clear.” There was a pleading note under the data, small and shamed, as though the past could somehow forgive him the failure.

Clint stirs on the sofa, like he’s thinking of coming to join the pile that’s forming around Cap, but for the sake of the coffee table, refrains. “You all got out though?” he asks, “All _your_ men?” Steve nods, but not like he’s happy about it. “Even Bucky?” Another nod, echoed from Coulson beside him, and Clint stretches his arm out along the sofa in a show that’s more at ease than any of them feels. “Then I’d say you did damn well for an improv raid. Especially if you got away with one of those tanks.” He slants a glare at Coulson, who gives it right back, unimpressed.

Steve digs up a grin at the exchange, but from where Tony’s sitting, it looks hollow at best. “Two of them, actually.” The grin trues up at Clint’s indignant squawk. “Only one had a working cannon, and the other one fell off its treads about twenty miles away, when…” He shakes his head, the grin falling away. “Sorry, getting ahead of myself. Monty had all the Oughts… sorry, the omegas in the second tank. Wouldn’t put em in with Dernier and Dugan and the captive — one of Zola’s lab assistants who wanted to live, or else he just wasn’t fitted with a cyanide tooth. Anyway. I was holding down the gate and covering our retreat, so I didn’t see… I didn’t know what kind of condition Bucky was in, just that Monty found him in the lab, and Buck’d got the doc’s escape bag with a bunch of files in it. I found out later that Bucky almost got Zola himself that day. Got close enough to bust the bastard’s lip open before… there was some kind of chemical, an orange powder that … Buck got a face full of it. Had to let Zola go, drop and roll in the mud before it’d stop burning, and even then he couldn’t see straight. Monty found him in the camp cistern and dragged him to the tanks so we could scram, but even then he could tell something was wrong.”

“It made him go into heat, didn’t it?” Bruce asks it like he already knows the answer. “We did a course on the Nazi breeding chemicals in college,” he explains as every head in the room turns toward him. “Every omega and meta-omega that came out of those camps pregnant gave birth to a girl. We still don’t know exactly how, but it tripled the world population of human females within the decade. People were… well, still are interested in how that came about.”

“Torture,” Steve says, flat and hard, yet somehow not quite a condemnation. “Whatever was in that powder, it took Bucky from dead cool to a full bore breeding heat in about half an hour.”

Tony whistles, awed and horrified at the idea. Even the worst heat of his life still took a decent twelve hours to ramp up to speed. To have it hit all at once… He glances upward as one of Natasha’s curls slips over Steve’s shoulder. Her expression is blank, but her scent simmers with nerves, subtle but sharp beneath the rising melange of sour grief, old anger, and slowly sweetening heat coming from Steve. Swallowing a whine, Tony rubs his cheek on Steve’s knee, and Natasha’s fingers, trembling and cool, begin to card through Tony's hair. To his surprise, Steve joins in the petting after only a couple of strokes, and the scent of him settles. Still sad, and still hot, but less brittle, Tony thinks, and is irrationally proud of the shift.

“I didn’t know anything was really wrong until twenty miles out,” Steve goes on after a moment, his voice low and steady, his hand still smoothing Tony’s hair. “The second tank’s tread cracked clean off and the whole thing went down sideways into a ravine. By the time we got turned and back there, Jim and Gabe were fighting to drag Monty out. He was gone -- almost in full rut from the smell. They had him in a HYDRA filter mask, and his wrist was broke from where he pulled out of the handcuffs trying to get at Bucky. Gabe closed up the hatch right away, but even then, we could all smell the heat.” The petting stops, Steve’s hand resting limp to the curve of Tony’s neck, so he can’t possibly miss the fine tremor going through it as Steve takes a big, bracing breath and blows it out again.

“We couldn’t let him out of the tank like that. We were still five miles from rendezvous, and even if we knocked him out, wrapped him in a blanket and I carried him there, Buck's heat scent would have drawn every Gerry Ace for miles around down on our heads. We’d have been…” Steve takes his hand away, and feeling him straighten, Tony sits back himself, reaching for Steve’s hand before it can get too far.

“Hey,” he says, searching for the omega under the Captain’s mask. “You know you _had_ to go in, right? Not just for your squad, but for him too. After what it was like for you today, you know how bad he needed you.”

Steve nods, but his hand is still and wooden in Tony’s grip, and his expression holds not a trace of forgiveness to it. “I know,” he says, “but that doesn’t make what happened right.”

Natasha shifts uneasily, her leg tensing just so much beneath Tony’s weight as she asks what they all suddenly don’t want to be wondering, “Did Bucky say no, Steve?”

And Steve, thank fuck, shakes his head, though he doesn’t look any happier about it. “No, he… he told me afterward he didn’t.”

Tony picks up his head then and stares into Steve’s face, finally glimpsing what might just be the root of the whole damned problem. “He _told you_?”

The look Tony gets back is grateful, miserable, guilty, and relieved all at once. “Yeah. Because I… I didn’t. I don’t.” He took a deep breath, arching back so that his head brushed against Thor’s belly, and let it rest there, eyes closed while he let the guilty secret leak out of him. “Even to this day, I can’t remember what I did to him.”

~*~

“Steve.”

He shifted. Was met with pleasure, hunger, lust, exhaustion. Sighed weariness like bricks on his chest, and rutted closer with a growl.

“Ahh, Jesus…Steve, come on buddy, wake up.” Bucky’s voice, sounding annoyed as usual. Gentle slaps at his cheek and jaw. He nuzzled away with a grunt, and his nose filled up with the most beautiful scent in the world. It made his hard cock pulse against its constraints, made his mouth fill with juice and his hips shove to get closer, better, more.

“No no no. No more licking, pal. You got enougha this crap in you already.” Fingers wound in his hair, scruffed his face up to the cool air, and then there were lips against his; soft, damp, heated like a bruise. “Come on, Stevie, up here.” The words gusted hot against his mouth, and a tongue slipped in on his groan, distracting him from shaking free. The clench around his knot tightened, and he shivered a gasp, only then noticing a slide of slick, bundled fingers in his ass. The lust in him blazed suddenly higher with the understanding that it must be Bucky who was under him, around him, and somehow inside him all at once, whose voice was in his ear, whose scent was in his throat, whose taste was on his tongue. He couldn’t not look. He couldn’t not see that.

“There you are,” Bucky grinned when Steve pulled away from the kiss, panting and blinking. “Knew you had to be in there somewhere.” Steve would have asked what the hell he meant, only Bucky shoved his fingers in again, and his knuckles rubbed like pearls over Steve’s knot from the inside, so it was about all Steve could do to remember to breathe. “That’s it, buddy,” Buck purred, his free hand rubbing at the back of Steve’s head, ruffling his hair like he used to do during the asthma attacks and heat fevers. “That’s it, let me have it…no, don’t move,” he yelped as Steve pushed back against his fingers. “We’re still tied. Just let me take care of you, ok?”

“Tied?” Steve grunted, taking his weight up on his elbows so Bucky could better reach. “Feels like… God, Bucky, it feels like I’m about to…”

“Yeah, you been knotted up about an hour this time,” Bucky grumbled, spreading his fingers inside so the stretch made Steve’s breath drizzle out of him in a needy whine. “Only you could stay knotted while you was passed out and drooling on my ear, I swear. But my hand to God, if you don’t get off and unkink pretty soon you’re gonna be carrying me outta this tank, because I won’t be able to feel my legs for a month.”

Steve blinked, taking in Bucky’s dilated eyes, swollen lips, the pinked flush of his high cheekbones, the scent of heated want curling up from his sweat damp hair. He didn’t buy the grumbling, but there was worry under the lust, and that, more than anything, kicked through Steve’s fuck-fugue to let some sense in. “I passed out?” he asked.

Bucky snorted, raked his fingers around Steve’s knot again, and grunted as Steve couldn’t restrain a thrust of his hips at the sensation. “You ain’t eaten anything since Tuesday, Steve,” he murmured then. “You been either fighting, or fucking nonstop since then. You just ran outta gas is all. There’s food, but you can’t have it till you let go and fuckin' come already.”

He shivered, dropped his face to the sweaty funk of Bucky’s hair, and groaned. “Real close, Buck,” he said through the roar of blood in his ears.

“Yeah,” came the breathless reply as fingers tangled in his hair again. “Just…yeah. Christ, Steve, don’t you lick me again, okay? Another caveman session might kill us both at this point.”

Steve forced his head away, gulped acrid, damp air through his mouth so he wouldn’t bury his teeth in the tempting curve of Bucky’s shoulder as his orgasm rushed closer and closer. The skin there was littered with the marks of his teeth, like flowers blooming on pale ground, like his name carved into his mate’s skin forever, just as deeply as Bucky was carved invisibly into his.

He brushed his fingers over one crimson suck-mark, and came, his orgasm more like the sudden, weary relief of a cramp than the blinding ecstasy he’d become used to. He could feel Bucky coming too, gently answering each weary pulse with a sweet inner clasp that seemed equally sleepy and slow, his groan a low and grateful thing as he stroked Steve’s neck over and over again. 

“God, finally,” Bucky sighed, slipping his fingers free of Steve’s ass and reaching to the side where their clothes were piled. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said, shoving a canteen at Steve once he’d wiped his fingers clean. “I’m impressed as hell at your super stamina, but three days of full-on rut is a bit goddamned much on the receiving end.”

The water was chilly and tasted of tin, but as soon as it crossed Steve’s tongue it was the most amazing thing in the world. He had to force himself to stop while there was still a couple swallows left for Bucky. It was then that the meaning behind Bucky’s words sank in. “Three days?” he sputtered, tugging back too soon.

“Quit!” Bucky bit out, whacking him in the back of the head. “Lie still, God damn it!”

“But the pickup! We’ve missed-”

“Yeah. Stark’s long gone, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it while your knot’s still in me, so cool down and dump steam, will ya?”

Steve groaned, dropping his head with a clang against the tank’s icy bulkhead. A hundred miles behind enemy lines, all their intel useless now, and they’d packed for a quick strike, not a long march. Phillips would never approve a rescue for one rangy pack with a jumped-up showgirl at the head.

“I told them to go,” he prayed, eyes closed against the helpless sting. “Tell me they went. Please tell me they aren’t still-”

“That buncha meatheads?” Bucky scoffed, gaze skating away from Steve’s. “Like hell they’d leave their Ace and one of their Oughts alone in enemy territory. I think Gabe went to the meet point to deliver the intel and tell Stark to buzz off, but they been raiding the HYDRA camp and laying false trails to buy us time since then.” Steve groaned a curse, then winced as Bucky whacked him again. “Quit that! Quit actin’ like any a this is your fault, cause it ain’t - not my heat, not your rut, not Monty’s broke arm, or Jacques’ gettin’ winged when we bugged outta there.” 

Bucky grabbed Steve’s face, palms rough against three days of stubble as he hauled him up to the light and held him there. “That’s all on Zola, Steve; him and his goddamned chemicals. You and me, and even those dumb mooks outside, we didn’t do nothin we didn’t have to.” He cracked a grin that looked fragile, but determined, and let go to reach for the clothes again, coming up with a bar of chocolate and a foil rations packet. “Except for you being too fuck-happy to eat, that is. Here. Get some a this in ya while we’re still stuck.” He unwrapped the bar, and the smell of the candy, rich, heavy and smooth, was almost enough to distract Steve from the empty twist of guilt in his guts.

“You should have some too, if your heat’ll let you.” he offered, breaking off a piece.

The grin he got back then was a surer, raunchier thing. “Heat’s over, pal. It was a fake, brought on by the chemicals, so you pretty much fucked it into submission that first night. Since then I mostly been thirsty, but I’ve eaten a bit here and there while you was dozin’ between rounds."

The candy turned to ash in Steve’s mouth, but he made himself keep chewing, and to swallow, and to take another bite after it. “If your heat was over,” he said once he could say the words in a steady voice, “then why did you let me-”

Bucky scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Pft. Like I coulda stopped you in that condition.” 

And he couldn’t hide his flinch at those words, couldn’t take another bite, couldn’t even take a breath for the sudden, enormous weight that seemed to settle over his shoulders. Just another dumb Ace, fucking whatever he could hold down when his rut came on him, and not caring whether they wanted it or not. He was no better than Hodges, no better than- 

“Hey.” There was a warning in Bucky’s voice, but Steve couldn’t make himself look up and face it. “Steve, that stuff was murder, okay? And it hit you twice as hard as it hit me, because that was what Zola wanted, okay?”

Steve shook his head, dragged a breath past the clench of his throat. “No. No, it’s not okay.”

“That stuff was hurting you, Steve. I don’t know if it was 'cause of your sensitive nose, or because that meta status made you more vulnerable, or because you wouldn’t stop lickin’ it off me, but it was hurting you. So I helped you out, just like you been helpin' me out all this time.”

“Did you even try to make me stop?” His voice cracked on the word ‘try’, and Bucky cussed, mean and hard, and slapped a cupped palm over Steve’s ear so his head rang with the sound.

“You ask for this?” he growled when Steve shook off the ringing to glare. “My capture, the doc, the torture, that gas he hit me with on the base? What it did to me? What it did to you? You plan it? You give the order?”

“Course not, Bucky,” Steve sighed, wondering if he could get loose yet. “But if I hadn’t okayed the raid on -”

“Shut it!” Bucky took hold of his shoulders and gave a shake. “You wished for any of this, aside from you not being an Ought anymore? You ever, even _once_ wanted to have me this way? By force, the way you keep thinkin’ you did it?”

That was the hell of it though, because if Steve was honest, he couldn’t say he hadn’t wanted it. Not with violence, no, but he’d wanted so, so badly to claim Bucky in the past, to bite, to mark, to bond them so deeply together than nobody could ever get them apart again. That wasn’t what Bucky was talking about, but Steve couldn’t help thinking of how bad he’d wanted what his friend hadn’t ever offered, and to wonder if some part of him didn’t want to take it anyway all along.

“No, you didn’t,” Bucky went on when Steve didn’t answer. “Never once, not for even a second, you didn’t. ‘Cause I _know_ you, Steven Grant Rogers, and you ain’t got rape in you. You never did.”

“I got off,” Steve forced it out through his teeth. “I knotted, you said so.” He couldn’t stay still any longer, trapped in Bucky’s too-knowing gaze. He’d subsided just enough to tug free, and so Steve did, looking away from Bucky’s wince as they uncoupled in a warm, wet gush.

“Hell yes, you knotted. My heat wouldn’ta quit till you did, so what’re you chokin’ on?”

Steve found the rag - once somebody’s undershirt, from the look of it, now torn and stained beyond rescue - and wiped himself down with brutal efficiency. “Don’t you understand, Bucky, that means I _liked_ it! I liked doing that to you!”

He wasn’t expecting the bark of laughter that outburst won him. “So? I liked it too, once you got your ass in here and cut me loose from the gunner’s chair!” Bucky grinned, all sauce and sass without a shadow of remorse. He caught the rag from Steve’s hands, and mopped himself up. “And you know what, Steve? If liking it’s what we get to make up for a shit situation like this one was, then I’ll goddamned well take it.” He flung the rag aside and sat up, mad enough to wince right through and keep moving when it obviously hurt. He grabbed Steve’s shoulder, and gave him a shake like he was still the bigger of the two of them. “I’ll take it and spit in Zola’s eye while I do, ‘cause you can bet that sorry little bastard didn’t go outta his way to make it nice for us!”

“And if it wasn’t just this situation?” Steve bit out his confession. “If maybe I _did_ want this, or something like it, all the while? Even back when I was a skinny, useless Ought nobody but you would even- ow!” He rubbed his ribs by reflex - Bucky’s punch had surprised him more than hurt. The sting was fading already.

“I think you spent too much time with the nuns,” he said, breathing mad like fire through his nose, and glaring in the half dark of the tank. “You wanna go lookin for guilt like that when there’s no harm done to either one of us right here. Say a couple of Our Fathers if you got to, but I sure’s hell ain’t sorry for this.”

“Buck-”

“For _any_ of it,” he snapped, going to the pile of clothes and rooting through it.

Steve sighed and finished the candy bar. “T’s true though,” he mumbled when Bucky started pitching pieces of his own uniform, miraculously intact, at him. “I’ve lo-”

“Lost sighta what it’s like to maybe _get_ somethin' you want instead of just wishin' for it,” Bucky cut him off with a mean grin. “I can tell.”

He sighed again and shook out pants, damp, and tacky with a week’s wear… minus three days in a pile on the floor. “Damn it, Bucky, I’m tryin to say-”

“Well don’t!” Bucky rounded on him with a flash of teeth. “Don’t say it, Steve. Don’t you say it like that -- all guilty and sick looking, like you wanna go pick a fight just so’s someone’ll dish you out a beating!” Shaking mad and rumbling in his chest, he leveled a finger at Steve like it had a gun attached. “I don’t wanna hear it like that, Punk, so you just keep it to yourself. You save it till you can look me in the eye and say it like you mean it!”

“Buck,” Steve said, reaching. “I do mean -”

“And that day _ain’t_ today, Steve,” Bucky said over him, dragging on a pair of briefs with a grimace. “It ain’t any day where I gotta wear Dugan’s spare shorts, and some dead Gerry’s pants for the hike out to Stark’s goddamned meet point so we can get our sorry asses home!”

Steve sat up quick, nearly braining himself on a twisted curl of the tank’s inner shielding. “Stark’s coming?” he demanded, afraid to hope. “But if we missed the pickup three days ago-”

Bucky gave a wry twist of smile and tucked too-long trousers into his unlaced boots. “Yeah, well apparently Gabe’s not the only one with more sentimental loyalty than smarts,” he said, dragging the laces tight enough to keep them on, but without a care for the sloppy look. “We got a new meet point now, ' bout 15 miles away from here, and a date to meet Stark there at sundown tonight.”

“Can you make that?” Steve frowned, noting the careful angle of Bucky’s back and legs, how his movements were a little loose, a little slow, how his hands seemed to shake every once in awhile. “After the fall on that tree, and what I-” He stopped when another rations packet bounced off his forehead.

“Watch me, Ace,” Bucky dared. “You’re the one who kept passing out, not me, remember? And if you think you’re gonna go 15 miles on one candy bar, it’s you who’s gonna be slowing us all down.” Steve gave in and opened the packet with a sigh. 

“Anyway,” Bucky went on, throwing his jacket and a torn black shirt over his arm as Steve began to eat with his fingers. “I got ten bucks with Dugan and Jones sayin Stark brings yer girl with him for the pickup, and I sure’s hell ain’t gonna miss the show when she kicks yer ass for missin' another ride.”

Steve swallowed so he wouldn’t choke. “Peggy? No way. Colonel Phillips would never let her join a crazy rescue. I don’t think she’d be stupid enough to- ow! Will you quit throwing things at me?”

“Maybe when you quit tryin ta think on an empty stomach! You ain’t normally this dumb, Steve, so maybe you better get yer pants on and eat that other pack of rations before you try any more thinkin'.” Then he hiked himself up the ladder, jacket a wad of blue between the bunching muscles of back and shoulder. “I’m gonna go see if they got enough water for me to wash the rest of this crap offa me. Last thing we need’s to have it set anybody else off before we can get outta here.” Then he heaved aside the great steel hatch, and was gone into the burst of icy, bright air.

Steve shivered, squinting up at the cold, empty space where he had been. Woodsmoke and pine pitch swirled away the fugue of sex and sweat and desperation inside the shadowed metal den, and with them came understanding. ‘Not today,’ Bucky had said; not like this, not ‘not at all.’ So there was still hope. Like Peggy had said back in that tavern in London; when the war was over things would be different, but they’d change by degrees before then too. 

“I do love you, Bucky,” he murmured to the patch of empty sky, thinking it might not be too much longer before he’d be saying those words again, where they’d actually matter. “I always did.” 

Then he ate three more stolen rations packets, put on as much of his filthy uniform as he could stand, and went to see about getting himself washed up too. He hoped Dernier still had some of that wire they’d stolen from the last base, because if they used that to rig the tanks weird blue batteries to feedback on themselves in a loop through the bulkhead, there was a good chance the Howling Commandos could be a good five miles off before the explosion drew any notice. 

Even if they weren’t in shape for a quick march.  
 


	11. Life Sentence

“So we kept it quiet,” Steve says to the floor, as if he’s in a confessional, or on the witness stand; as if nearly the whole team hasn’t pressed in close around him to touch and stroke and lean into his space while he talks. “Buck said he wasn't quick, that it was a fake heat, so it couldn't have took, even if I had been priming him for near on a year. The other Oughts didn’t think Buck smelled like he’d quickened either - he smelled different, sure, but we put that down to the chemicals, and kept the whole thing mum." He gives a helpless little shrug, like he's trying to convince himself even now. "It was too soon for anyone to tell, but if we let the Brass catch wind of what really happened out there, we all knew Buck’d probably get a blue ticket home just on principle.” 

Coulson makes a thin, distressed noise and leans just a bit harder against Steve’s side, his fingers tangling with Natasha’s behind his back, their eyes meeting over Steve’s bowed head. Bruce watches the exchange from his armchair and reminds himself to be still, be quiet, and be calm, to ignore the way his blood pools low and hot in his groin as the rising smell of Steve’s heat creeps around his brain. His touch wouldn’t be calming to Steve. Not now, not like this. And after what he’s just been told, the very last thing Bruce wants to see is Steve looking at him with fear in his eyes. 

“He’d always wanted a big family,” Steve goes on, one hand gently fretting Tony’s hair into a riot of spikes while the other curls snugly in Clint’s grip. “Said he wanted his own baseball team, you know? Told us all that if I'd caught him quick, then he’d just call it an early start on the outfield. But he damn sure wasn't gonna go back to the States as a war bride and leave the Commandos to bring Zola in without their best marksman…” he swallows, nudges his head back against Thor’s stroking hand, and makes an obvious effort to smile. Bruce makes an effort not to growl, and tells himself not to be jealous. 

“The prisoner -- Zola’s assistant -- went right into the lab with our guys,” Steve says. “Cooked up a counteragent against the HYDRA stuff, and kept his mouth shut about Bucky’s heat, and my…rut. I guess nobody on our side asked too much about it, because the Commandos got promised shots to counteract the attack before our next trip out, but Bucky never got called into medical for an exam. We figured we had time.” He lets go a sigh, and shifts awkwardly under the weight of his team's sympathy. 

“I should have reported it anyhow,” he adds after a moment. “Only I was buying time for him. And for me to figure out what to do to keep him near. I knew if the Brass tried to blue-ticket him, and he’d have gone AWOL just to stay with us, pregnant or not. I just didn’t know how to get around the regs and still keep him and the baby -- if there was a baby -- alive. And thanks to the prisoner, we knew where Zola would be going next, and exactly how he’d be getting there. If we could just get Zola off that train, I thought we might catch another option or two out of it along with him.”

Bruce tries not to think about what kind of options an unwillingly pregnant beta-cum-omega might consider valid back in those days. In school he’d studied the long term devastation the nullifiers had on so many soldiers returning from the war, read the horror stories about black market terminations gone terribly wrong and omegas left dead or mad or maimed in their wake. Any option a butcher like Zola could offer would not have been better, _couldn't_ have been better! But who was Bruce Banner, seventy years, four wars, an ocean, two continents, and a sexual revolution distant from the moment, to sit in judgment? Especially since, given what he’d done to himself while looking for his own ‘options’, Bruce will never now sire, nor bear a child of his own. Logic, however, does little to quell the protective urge that has him gripping the chair arms at the idea of such a threat to mate and child.

“That was when you lost him though,” Coulson sighs into the hush that follows Steve’s confession. “That was the mission when Sgt. Barnes…”

“Fell,” Steve drops the word gently, but it hits like boulder in a pool, and murmurs of distress ripple away through them all. “Yeah.”

Tony picks his head up from Steve’s knee and gives his arm an accusing poke. “And then two weeks later you were pulling a kamikaze act on the Greenland ice sheet.”

Steve frowns. “It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t trying to-”

But Tony’s slithers around, kneeling up between Steve’s spread knees, and catches him into a hug despite Coulson and Natasha both being somewhat in the way. “Shh Steve,” he says, low and warm as Steve’s arms come up tentatively around him. “Shh. It’s all right. It doesn’t matter now.” 

“No,” he answers, letting his face drop into the curve of Tony’s neck. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

“My friend,” says Thor, his voice thick with emotion as he strokes Steve’s golden hair like he has every right to it, “Steven, my shield-brother, tell me what we may do. Tell us how to help you.”

_’You can start by taking your hands off him!’_ Bruce thinks, but carefully keeps it behind his teeth. Instead he focuses on how beautifully his omega, his Tony slots into Steve’s larger frame, with Coulson a steady calm shoring up them both; how the omegas’ rising scents twine into something wild, sharp and alluring in his brain. He notices Clint slanting him a nervous glance, and forces himself not to return it, not to feed the ruttish temperament that’s already goading him to fight or fuck _some_ thing.

“Sometimes it feels like I never stopped falling at all,” Steve murmurs. “Seems like I just fell right through the ice, and through the century, and out the other side of the world.”

Tony leans back enough to catch Steve’s face in both hands. “Steve aren’t you ready to let us catch you yet?” he demands, every inch the brat prince, except for the doting softness in his eyes as he sets a gentle kiss on the corner of Steve’s lips. They both shiver, and Coulson makes a low, moist sound that cuts off with a squeak when Steve turns his head from Tony’s and steals a kiss from him too. To Bruce’s relief, Clint catches Thor’s eye and urges him silently and unsubtly to follow to the kitchen, leaving Natasha neither surprised nor grudging when Steve turns his kiss finally to her. Bruce watches her soft lips linger over Steve’s, gently persistent until he breathes a shivering sigh and retreats, flushed pink and lovely.

“I know how a pack anchors on its Oughts,” he says, hands laced loosely around Tony’s back. “The Ace might lead, but if he falls, fails, or leaves, the pack always stay with their omega. I knew from the day we met that would be you, Tony. You’re this pack’s home, and that’s why I stay neutral when we’re in the Tower, why I yield to Bruce unless we’re in the field. If the Hulk wasn’t null as a child, I wouldn’t even let it out there, but-”

“No!” Bruce flinches to hear the snarl in his own voice, closes his eyes and breathes for a long moment to force it down again, to make himself think clearly, speak calmly. “You can’t believe I ever wanted to lead this team, Steve,” he says. “You know I’m no leader - I couldn’t be the rudder we need, on the field or off it.”

“But you’re with Tony,” Steve protests. “What kind of a leader would I be if I interfered with your omega and- ow!”

“Don’t talk about the omega like he’s property, Grand-dad,” Tony snarks as Steve rubs at his ribs with a pout. “I don’t belong to anybody but me. And Pepper, when she wants me for a board meeting, but she makes everyone keep their clothes on for those, so that doesn’t count.”

“I know,” Steve says, taking his hands away from Tony's back and leaning away, like he's about to try and shake Coulson and Natasha off so he can retreat again. “I know you get to choose now, and I’m glad the law doesn’t let anybody force you to take someone you don’t want, Tony, but,” he flicks a glance Bruce’s way, quick and apologetic. “But it’s pretty obvious you _have_ chosen, and I wanted to respect that. I needed to respect that.”

“By leaving us without our alpha as soon as we'd left the battlefield?” Clint accuses from the kitchen, where he and Thor are uncapping bottles of beer they’ve found in the fridge. “How was that respecting your pack?”

Steve winces, but settles back into the curve of Natasha’s sheltering hug, his face all determination. “I didn’t leave. I’ve been here if anyone needed me, I just-”

“Buried half yourself in a hole,” Clint scoffs angrily, collaring five open bottles on his way back into the room, “More than half, if we’re actually gonna tally it. ‘Cause you maybe thought we wouldn’t fucking notice or something?”

“Barton,” Coulson warns as Clint swings by the armchair to thrust the first bottle at Bruce.

“Nope,” he shakes his head, pointedly stubborn, and turns to set the other bottles on the corner of the coffee table. “Not gonna can it, Boss. Cap pulls out his alpha status for reporters, fans and politicians, but we're his pack, and we don’t get a piece of him unless there’s a villain involved? That’s bullshit.” He turns to intercept Thor with the last of the beer, and herds the Asgardian to the end of the sofa, away from the cluster in the middle of the room, stomping and scowling all the way. “How can we go to our pack leader when we need him if he’s hiding from us, pretending to be nothing?”

“Nothing?” Natasha growls, glaring. “By that you mean a null, like me?”

Clint has the good sense to wince, at least. “Shit. Tash, sorry, I’m-”

She waves a hand, as if to swat his apology from the air. “You’re not wrong about the rest, though I’m still going to kick your ass for being an insensitive prick next time we spar. But Steve, you’re not a null, not really.” She reaches for a bottle and presses it into the Captain’s hands. “It’s always felt wrong for you to act like you were one. It felt like you couldn't trust us with who you really were, but none of us could figure out what we’d done wrong -- why you would shut us out.”

“I’d noticed it too, Captain,” Coulson puts in, his formal tone at odds with the slant of his slight frame, like the curve of a shield over Steve’s right shoulder, and the rich, peppery smell of want rising off him to twine with Tony’s metallic sweetness and Steve’s musky, sugary heat-scent. “The way you weren’t bonding with the rest of the team was a big concern for command. There’d been some talk about reassigning you as a loner agent - don’t worry,” he adds as Steve’s head whips around, eyes wide and hurt. “I talked them out of it. But you should know that it’s been noticed outside the team.”

Coulson doesn’t bring up the missile attack last month, the one that brought down the Quinjet when Steve had been the only Avenger in it. He doesn’t have to. Bruce can see every one of the team thinking of it, of how they’d combed a hundred acre swatch of Appalachian debris field for days, both hoping, and dreading that they would find their lost Captain in the wreckage. How the smell of scorch and sear, twisted wood, turned earth and shattered steel had filled their noses while shred after shred of useless evidence turned up in the rocky soil, and none of it pointed to him, their lost one. How the lot of them had crumbled a little inside when Thor discovered Cap’s vibranium shield embedded in the flank of a towering pine, some twenty feet aloft, where something falling fast had torn away a massive limb and sent it to crack the stones below. How hope had both flared and failed in them all when the search dogs brought back a bloodied plaid shirt from the spot, but nothing else.

They all remember it, like they all remember the undeniable joy in Jarvis’ voice when he’d accessed the team’s phones simultaneously to announce that he’d received a collect call from one Steven Grant Rogers in Monson, Maine, and wanted permission to accept the charges.

They all remember it but Steve, who had not been there to see, and whom Bruce is beginning to suspect might not have realized that their worry was for him even if he had been.

“Is it so hard to understand that I might value this team, this pack enough to try and make myself fit where I wouldn’t harm its dynamic?” Steve asks, a bright edge to his voice. “Tony’s the Ought, Bruce is his chosen Ace, and if I don’t need to be either one, then there’s no cause for strife.”

Clint swears under his breath. Thor scowls, shifting restlessly in his seat while Tony makes a disgusted noise and steals Steve’s beer. Natasha sighs and hands another bottle to Steve before replying for them all. “And yet I can’t help noticing that you and Stark never miss a chance to squabble like dockside cats.”

Steve flushes then, squirms a little, and Bruce has to shift his seat as the sugary smell of his heat rising through the close-pressed omegas reminds Bruce's cock of just what it’s good for. “I just… didn’t want to put myself in where I wasn’t wanted-ow!” He flinches away to rub at the back of his head again. “Tony, will you quit that?”

“I dunno,’ Tony snarks back, poking Steve hard in the chest this time. “Will you? ‘Cause I been trying to get a rise out of you forever, Cap, and I’m sick of you playing hard to get!”

“Playing-”

“You might not have noticed it,” Tony speaks over him with another poke. “But you and me, we get along just fine when you alpha up on the battlefield. And we did pretty damn good an hour ago when both of us were as omega as could be, didn’t we? It’s only when you go all constipated, tucked up, and judgey that we have problems, and I’m pretty sure that’s down to you, big fella, not us!”

“But Bruce,” Steve glances up, eyes all but pleading for a rescue, and it is suddenly more than Bruce can take not to be touching him too.

“Bruce would be relieved if you’d take their advice, Steve,” he says, pushing out of the chair and taking the single, chasm-wide step to the table. Natasha slips gracefully out of his way, joining Clint and Thor on the sofa as Bruce reaches out to trace a finger down the stubble-rough planes of Steve’s cheek and jaw. “Let us all get used to who you really are, instead of trying so hard to give us who you think we want you to be, won't you?” 

It’s hypocritical, he knows, saying this to Steve now. It’s something Bruce has struggled with all his life, from childhood through last Sunday’s dinner meeting. He fights his own urge to hide in plain sight more than he thinks he’ll ever be able to tell a living soul, but that only means he knows the terrible cost of it. Bruce knows how deep the loneliness goes, how it can crack the foundations of your heart to powder, wondering if, should you ever let the act drop, you’d find yourself alone against the world. Feeling like you always have to _try_ to be worthy of your family’s love, of your pack’s trust, of your home. And if ever you should grow too weary to keep up the charade, it would all slip away like sand.

Tony leans in again, nuzzling under Steve’s chin to set a line of kisses up the column of his throat. “Let us catch you, Steve,” Bruce hears him murmur when he gets to Steve’s ear. “We can figure out what to do with you later, just let us catch you now. Please.”

Bruce can feel Steve’s answering shiver under his fingers, can feel a groan vibrate the delicate skin of his throat as he turns his face into Tony’s hair and nods. Then, wordlessly, tentatively, he lifts his pale wrist toward Bruce, surrender and supplication in every line of him. Bruce takes up the offered hand, holds it still with carefully measured force as his mouth floods with hunger, and his prick throbs in eager anticipation. The scent of Steve’s heat is coming on fast now, and Bruce knows it will be on them all in a few minutes, clouding everything in a haze of animal red, but… but not yet. He rubs his thumb over the tendons of Steve’s wrist, feeling the pulse of blood race under his touch, and _wanting_.

“Tony, let him go,” he orders, hearing the rumble in his voice and unable to make himself restrain it.

Brown eyes flash up at him, hurt and surprised. “Bruce?”

“Let him go and back off,” he repeats with a flash of teeth. Coulson catches Tony’s elbow and hauls him clear before he can argue, and Bruce flashes the agent a grateful nod as he steps into the space Tony has just left, Steve’s wrist still cradled in his palm. 

“Steve,” he says as the big man finds his nerve and tips his face up to meet Bruce’s gaze. “Not if you aren’t ready. I promised you before that nobody would touch you if you didn’t want it, and I still intend to keep that promise. We’ll work the rest out however we can between now and the next time you have a heat, but I don’t want you to do this if-” voices rise in protest behind him, words garbling uselessly as Bruce snarls over the noise and shuts it down. “If you still feel the same way about being touched that you did earlier," he says, "you do not have to do this.”

Steve swallows, his unguarded gaze flickering with nerves and a rising awareness of the hunger that’s about to overtake them both. Then the blue eyes sink behind their lids, and he turns his chin to the side, making an unmistakable offering of his long, pale throat. "Please don't make this harder for me, Bruce,” he murmurs. “It’s coming back. The heat. I... I can't face it again. Not alone. But only know one other alpha I could bear to let... I don't want to have to ask Fury for help." The words fall like blows, and Bruce’s throat locks tight around a growl at the thought of the Director coming anywhere near his… Captain.

“Like hell you’re asking Fury!” Tony yelps from the sofa while Bruce struggles to force words through the wall of possessive rage that flares in his gut. “You’re ours, damn it!”

“Easy, Stark,” Coulson soothes, dragging Tony back into the huddle. “He knows.”

And he does, too. Bruce can tell it in the line of Steve’s offered throat, in the steadiness of his wrist against the unwitting clench of Bruce’s fingers. But the submissive slant of his eyes -- gaze pinned floorward, secrets shuttered behind the haze of want -- that’s not right, and Bruce won’t have it. “You're not going to ask Fury for anything,” he snarls, using a handful of Steve’s golden hair to turn his face up straight. “But you look me in the eye and tell me that this is what you want, Steve, or I swear to you, I will let the Hulk out to crush anyone who tries to put a hand on you."

“I do,” Steve answers, steady over the anxious murmurs of the team. “I do want this. Want you,” he flicks a glance at the sofa, then nods. “ _All_ of you. When I was lost last month, you were what I was thinking of. This place, this pack, this home.” His gaze returns to Bruce’s, bright with emotion, but finally, finally hiding nothing. 

“Even knowing how badly I fit into it, this was what I wanted. I want to belong here, I just didn’t know... How.” He nuzzles up against Bruce’s grip on his hair with a shy and tentative smile, urging the restraining clench into a possessive caress. “But I want you to catch me. And I want to belong with you, if you want me."

“We want you, Steve,” Bruce promises as relief uncoils into desire in his belly. He shifts his grip on Steve's wrist and pulls him to his feet, then cups his neck to pull him close. “We all want you,” Bruce says against the welcome of his soft, open lips.

~*~

The worst part wasn't that he couldn't get drunk – that was aggravating, annoying, boring, and tasted like cheap gin, expensive scotch, strong brandy, something green, and bad decisions. But it wasn't the worst part.

The worst part wasn't the blackout curfew announcement droning on and on from the loudspeaker a few blocks over, even though nobody who was actually outside damn well _cared_ about whether they were allowed to be on the streets or not. They wouldn't be skulking through the ruins trying to find something precious that hadn't yet been smashed to pieces if they had anywhere else _to_ be. 

The worst part wasn't even the haze hanging like curtains in the streets, like it didn't know from moment to moment whether it was choking mortar dust, wood smoulder, or stinking river fog. It hung, clung, and wrapped Steve's too-strong lungs in the bitter fugue of other people's shattered hopes, lost chances, and creeping nightmares.

No.

The worst part was that Steve had been sitting there at the only intact table in that bombed out pub for over two hours trying -- _trying_ to cry – and he couldn't. He held his breath, stared at the shadowed ceiling, picturing flying snow and shredding metal, blinked until his eyelids felt like sandpaper, and... nothing happened. 

Before Rebirth, before the serum, Steve'd had to struggle _not_ to cry whenever he got het up or frustrated, but now, when he'd have given his arm for some kind of release from the grinding twist around his chest, there was just... nothing there. In his mind, Steve relentlessly prodded the spot where his tears should be, like probing a broken tooth with his tongue, but where the loose, sloppy, sobbing, whelming grief belonged, there was just empty numbness. It was all gone, scraped out of him while he was distracted with trying not to murder Zola on the way back to England, and now he was left with a distant, hollow sort of ache, like a weight he'd been carrying all his life had got twice as big without warning.

But no, that wasn't the worst part either. The worst part was that Peggy had broken curfew to come and find him. Her coat was buttoned all the way to her throat against the dank chill, severe and forbidding as if it was some kind of armor, but her scent as she picked up a chair and settled by Steve's lone standing table was sweet and soothing, and all over omega, and Steve hated it. 

He hated it like he hated everything else: the serum, his cells, the 'protective system of regeneration and healing', the side effects, the useless damn booze he kept on drinking because it was there, and he was there, and he couldn't think of anything better to do with either one of them. Peggy wasn't supposed to pity him, wasn't supposed to feed him lines about absolution and honor and choices and _dignity_ , and all the damned lies he'd put up with from everyone else for two days now. But that wasn't the worst part, not really.

The worst part was how seething, cold-crackling rage kept forcing its way through everything else in his head, no matter what he did. Rage at Zola, who had almost not made it off that damned train alive. Rage at Schmidt, the real Hydra, who had no weak point to hit, nothing he held critical, nothing he seemed to _care_ about... nowhere Steve could strike to wound him in payment for... for this. There was no way Steve could hurt the Red Skull the way he was hurting then; not unless he destroyed the man and everything he'd touched -- Hydra's every spawning head, every bloodied claw and poisoned fang burnt out till not even history would remember what that damned red and black symbol ever meant, or that a monster named Johann Schmidt had ever pretended to be a God.

"You won't be alone," Peggy said into the waiting hush, and only then did Steve realized he'd been speaking out loud. 

And _that_ was really the worst part.

"I am though," he said, hating himself for it, for the way the words rattled out of him, and the way the tears just _wouldn't_. "I am alone. He's... Bucky's gone, and I know that, but I keep thinking I'll look up and he'll come through the door laughing and calling me a punk." Steve ground his teeth, reminded himself not to crush the glass in his fist -- there was enough broken already, damn it. "But he isn't going to."

"I know."

"I knew he wasn't dead -- before, when I went after him in Austria. I knew it. Felt like he was tugging at me, telling me to hurry up and get a move on. But now I can't feel him." His voice cracked; a hopeful sign, but nothing more. 

"Steven-"

"Not like he's gone," Steve pushed past whatever she was going to say; past the soft eyes and sweet smell and gentle sympathy that just made him want to crush something irreplaceable. "But not like he's still there either. Just like he's... like the place where he goes is numb now." He picked up the glass, held it to what little light crept in through the pub's shattered facade. "Like I can see my arm, feel its weight on my shoulder, but I can't _feel_ it. It's still there, it's just... dead now."

Peggy caught his wrist, her grip firm, her fingers cool. "Steven," she said, and the alpha was back in her voice. "I _know_."

"How?" he ground through his teeth, wishing her fingers could bite in harder, hurt him more. "How would you know what this is like?"

The twist of her lips was stark in the gloom as she plucked the glass from his hand, and pulled it toward her. Steve went with the motion, too surprised by the sudden familiarity to yank away. His surprise rolled into open shock when she pressed his fingers around the side of her neck, above her neat collar but beneath the thick fall of her hair, and he felt... 

He blinked, pressed a little harder, traced an arch of smooth scars around the hardened knot of gland tissue. "You." When he pulled his hand away, it was shaking. "You're..."

"I was," she nodded, then took up his glass and sipped, her eyes dry, her voice steady. "Paul was killed during a bombing raid three years ago, just after he'd got me into the underground. We'd been together three months, bonded only for one. I was pregnant at the time, but in the shock of losing him..." there, at last the pain flickered through, and though she drowned it quickly in her cup, Steve was a little relieved to see it. 

"I met Abraham Erskine while I was in recovery. He told me what he was trying to do with the meta-alpha serum, and feeling I'd nothing left to lose by it, I agreed to help him with the testing." Her lips gave a wry little twist. "I'm sure you understand. So I _do_ know what it's like, Steven. I only wish that you didn't."

He closed his eyes, took back his hand and struggled to wring a breath out of the dank, thick air. "Tell me how you did it," he asked, not able to care how pathetic it sounded. "You had a real, blood-sealed bond, not a..." he waved his hand at the half-assed, mixed up brother/mate/ally/rival mess that was all he had left of Bucky now. "How did you keep going after? How do..."

"I worked." Her answer was all defiance, unyielding and unflinching. "It was too late to save my own, so I put everything I had into saving my countrymen -- their loves, their children, their packs. I'd been helpless to stop it when those things were taken away from me, and so taking arms against that loss on behalf of others helped me to feel... sound and sane again. The serum made it easier to take sex and bonding out of the equation, as you know, but it was the work that helped me the most."

He nodded, seeing the sense of it even while his belly twisted against the idea of ever putting on the suit or picking up the shield again. He eyed the glass between them, nearly empty now, the bottle dusty and nearly full beside it, but the lure of drinking had soured into a sense of waste, and squandering what someone else probably needed more -- even if that was only a few hours of drunken oblivion.

Reading his glance, Peggy picked up the glass and sipped again. "But I was alone then, Steven. I'd no family left, just newly come to London. I didn't even have an imprint with my neighbors yet when that happened, let alone a loyal pack like you have waiting for you now."

No... no, _that_ was the worst part. He closed his burning eyes, and blew his breath out through his nose. "I can't," he whispered when she brushed his knuckles.

All she did was twist the knife, chasing his hand and digging in hard with her nails when he tried to pull it back. "They need you, Steven." 

"Peggy, I can't!" He grit his teeth and fought a shiver at the idea. "I can't just turn around and... let them..." He swallowed hard, thinking of Bucky's spend rubbed into his skin, of the taste of sweat and musk and _home_ on his tongue. "I can't be there for them. Not like that."

"Of course not like that!" She snapped, letting go of his hand so quick he rocked back a little in his seat. "Nobody's asking you to drop trou and collect your stud fee, for Heaven's sake!" He blinked at her, and she rolled her eyes at his confusion. "They don't need to sleep with you, Steven, they need to BE with you -- to mourn their loss and yours! Barnes was their omega, and as his mate, you are all of him that they have left!"

Or maybe _that_ was the worst part.

He shook his head, ignoring the stab of pain that sent through his chest. "I wasn't Bucky's-"

"Bollocks!" she slapped one palm flat and loud onto the table, so the bottle wobbled and the liquor sloshed in its glass. "You were the only one Barnes came back to over and over again, Steven! Only you, despite his confusion at his changed status and yours, despite girls throwing themselves at him at every turn, despite all he had to prove to himself and you and the world!" Her voice turned gently exasperated then. "You two _were_ mated, dearheart, however odd your gait in harness together."

Oh. There were the tears. Steven clenched his eyes up tight against them, and counted, very slowly, to ten. Only when he got there, he opened his mouth and the truth fell out, ragged, ugly, and bleeding on the table. "I love him."

"I know," she said, and her hand touched his again, very briefly, and was gone. "Everyone knows, Steven."

"I'll never love anyone else," he said, hating -- _hating_ \-- that Bucky wouldn't ever hear him say it now. "Never." Steve opened his eyes, expecting to see that gentle pity on Peggy's face again, soft reproach in her eyes. What he found was something steadier, more solid, more stubborn in the set of her mouth and the tilt of her brows, and the stern musk of her alpha side whispering out into the hanging air.

"Perhaps you'll not take another mate," she allowed. "Lord knows I can't imagine wanting anyone else after Paul. But who knows what time can change? And you already _do_ love that pack of yours -- your warband. You love them, though it hurts to remember it now, and they need to know that you do." 

She pushed out of her chair then, smoothing dust from her coat with neat, sure hands as she turned to go back the way she'd come -- as if she'd said what she came to say, and intended to leave him alone now. But she turned back after only a step, and said, "Corporal Dugan is across the street, you know."

Steve jerked a little in surprise, realizing only then that yes, the smoke he could smell hid a breath of corn, cordite and sandalwood underneath its pall. Peggy gave him a tart, victorious smile as she watched him sample Dumdum's scent out of the air. "I don't believe he would admit under torture that he's waiting for you," she added, "but there's not a lot of useful forage a beta could bring back to his pack from a bombed out stationer's shop."

"Yeah," he sighed, letting the sound of her breathing draw him to his feet, and by weary degrees, to her side. "I guess there isn't."

She gave him a smile, blatantly proud, and suspiciously bright around the eyes, but only reached up to rest her hand briefly against his cheek. He could smell her jasmine soap fading beneath the lure of her alpha nature, beckoning his omega side, the part of him that hurt the least out of all this, to follow her lead. 

He shook his head instead, feeling her touch snag on the stubble of three days' neglect before he turned for the slump of brick and lath next to the still-locked front door. "Dumdum," he called softly into the darkness.

There was a brief scratch, a sulfur smell, and a yellow glow of flame from the doorway, and then the man, all bowler hat and attitude, came to the threshold to glare at him. "Cap," was all he said. His pack bulged up in the shadows behind him, and he held two carrier bags in his off hand.

"Over here," Steve said, and held up the bottle he'd been working on... wasting. Then he stepped back out of the gap and waited. 

When Dumdum came up to the broken facade, stomping loud as if it was noonday and he'd never heard the word curfew in his life, Steve held the bottle out to him. He got a headshake for his troubles. "There more'n that?"

Steve nodded and stepped out of the way. "Yeah. Bar's oak. Held up pretty well. I already dropped some money in the till, so..." He grunted as Dumdum shouldered by, but stepped back to allow it all the same. Peggy gave him a frown, and the Deuce's scent went a bit mean through the hurt, so Steve wasn't too surprised when he slapped and clanked his way through the bottles as if he was deciding which would make the better weapon. "Where are the others?"

More rattling, then a cigar-tainted curse, and Dumdum began slapping his chosen bottles onto the bartop. Steve crossed the room in two strides, and caught the thick wrist between the Rye and Pernod. "Where. Are. They?" he asked.

"Same damn place they been ever since we all got turned loose from debriefing this afternoon, _Captain_ ," Dumdum said, chewing the words around his cigar. "Why do you ask?" He was pushing, glaring challenge in every line of his stubborn face, wanting -- needing proof that his alpha was still strong. Steve found he was rising to it almost before he'd recognized the test for what it was.

He jerked Dumdum into the bar between them, used the grip on his wrist to hold him there while with the other hand, he plucked the cigar from his mouth, leaving damp curls of tobacco on the man's clenched teeth. "Because you're my beta, and I want you to tell me where my damned pack is."

The mustache twitched up sideways at that, but though some of the anger slipped out of his eyes, Dumdum he kept his gaze locked steady on Steve's own. "They're back on base, where they're supposed to be," he said, not tugging against Steve's hold. "You're the one AWOL here, Cap."

"You-"

"I got a two hour pass," Dugan grinned, tipping a nod at the bags on the counter. His grin just got bigger when Steve let him go. " _You_ got MPs wondering why you got five guys hangin around your tent since two when you ain't even been there at all since we got back from Switzerland." 

"It's true," Peggy spoke up then, leaning against the pub's front door like she was enjoying the show. "You'll have some explaining to do, Steven, but I daresay the Colonel will be busy in interrogation for some time yet. You might just make it to base by change of shift if you start walking back now." 

"I'll get us somethin'" Dumdum growled, briskly packing the bottles into the last of his carrier bags. "Saw a taxi down the street. Just a couple a windows gone. Should run just fine."

"Oh yes, that'll go over a treat with the MP's," Peggy smirked at them and plucked a set of keys from her purse. "Or I could give you boys a ride, if you think that might be simpler."

And because it was Peggy, who'd helped him fight off Hodges that awful night, who'd rattled Steve into shape back in basic even when he didn't have the strength to hold it for long, whose alpha-scent had come to mean safety, trust, and compassion to Steve's wounded core, that was what they did. Dumdum grumbled and clutched his forage, but when the MPs, on the strength of the Agent's status and Steve's fame, let them through without inspecting their base passes, he huffed and held his peace. He wasted no time in vaulting out of the jeep as soon as Peggy braked in front of Steve's tent though, and headed straight in without waiting.

"He thinks I'm moving in on you," Peggy told Steve as Dumdum disappeared into the tent.

"You're not," Steve said after a long moment of waiting to feel a pang of anguish that, strangely, didn't come. He'd thought, more than once over the tumultuous months with Bucky, that he wouldn't have minded being with someone as steady and sure as Peggy. But now he'd felt that hard, bundled up knot of loss on the back of her neck, Steve knew why it hadn't ever been more than a fancy for him. She was brilliant, beautiful and brave, but she wasn't his. "You wouldn't," he said, and she smiled. 

"No," she agreed. "Even if I were inclined, I'd hardly dare. I suspect Jones might do me a mischief if I presumed." Steve's stomach twisted, but she lay a hand on his before he could protest. "He knows you can't, Steve -- not yet, and maybe not ever. They all know, just... just give them what you can, all right?" 

What he could. He glanced at the tent, spotting Monty and Jim through the mesh window, cuddled up tight, Gabe settled miserably against the alpha's other side. He realized with a twinge that they were sitting on Bucky's bed. The shadows of Dumdum and Jacques moved about the tent wall, setting things out on the desk, and he could hear Dumdum's low grumbling as they worked. The ache in his stomach twisted a little, turned fresher and rose toward his throat, but he made himself swallow it back. 

"What I can," He nodded, took a breath, then he leaned across, slow enough to make things obvious, and dropped a kiss onto Peggy's cheek. "Thank you, Agent Carter."

He felt her smile against his lips, and then something glinted in her hand, and she reached across and swiped a wickedly sharp penknife across the back of his knuckles. It was barely a sting, but the sudden gush of heat over his skin drew a gasp out of him all the same. "Off you go now, Captain," she said, patting his shoulder as the pain from the cut caught up and gave him something to brace up against. "We'll talk again tomorrow."

He slipped out of the jeep then. Took three long steps, each one like falling a mile from everything he thought he knew, falling and reaching behind him, but nobody was left to reach back, and... He shook his head, clenched his cut hand, let the sting lead him back to where he was needed, then reached for the tentflap with his hand dripping and red. 

"I'm going after Schmidt," he told them as five heads came up wary, his bloodscent sharpening the grief from their eyes. "I'm bringing him down, and I'm not gonna stop till all of Hydra's dead or captured." 

He let the statement hang for a long moment, then remembered to reach his bloody hand out to them, turning it from a warning to an invitation. It wasn't like they'd never tasted each other like this before -- any time one of the Commandos was pinked, the rest took a sip before things got bandaged up. Helped them all feel like they were sharing the hurt some, sharing strength, and maybe a little of that was what Steve was hoping for here... or maybe the truth was that all he had to offer them was the pain and rage that was seething in his blood. Everything else, everything better of him was numb, dead, frozen at the bottom of a narrow, icy cleft in the world.

Jacques was the first to move, stepping up with a murmured, "D'accord." as he caught Steve's offered hand and licked one hot swipe across the cut. Steve shivered under the sudden sense of red wine, sleepless dawn, almond blossoms and a violin just at the edge of hearing. "D'accord," he repeated, a savage grin starching up his wiry little shoulders as he gave Steve's hand a final squeeze and backed away to let Jim step into his place.

"I'm in," he said, and licked across the pad of Steve's thumb, where the blood had gathered to drip. He felt like fries and coke, salty air, incense and boardwalk taffy. The sound he made when Steve's rage took hold through his grief was something like a grateful sob. He took a second lick, a third, and then snarled when Dumdum scruffed him out of the way. His teeth were orderly, even, and stained with red. They glared, the Ought and the Deuce, and Steve let them, aware at this point that he didn't have the clout to put a stop to the fight. 

Then Jim huffed and yielded, and Dumdum grabbed hold of Steve's hand without a second glance, licking at the cut like he'd been wanting to get at Steve's blood ever since the pub. The Deuce was green grass, coal smoke, milk, and voices singing loudly through the wall. "Too fuckin' right," he muttered between hard, searching swipes of his tongue, mustache bristling along Steve's skin. "We'll fuckin' bring em all down, Cap."

Gabe slipped in soon, sneakily edging Dumdum out, and turning Steve's hand to sup the blood from his open palm with hot, gentle licks. He was pepper hot and corn sweet, and burning like rum and hot wax, and there was unveiled tragedy in his eyes as he shivered his way into Steve's red mood with crimson on his lips. "Me too, Cap," Gabe said to Steve, one hand dark and steady just below his elbow as Monty appeared behind him, patient for his turn. "Me too."

Then he slipped away, leaving Steve's arm hanging in the air, chilled and a little sore. 

Montgomery stared Steve in the eyes over it, unblinking for a long moment. Not aggressive challenge for dominance, but there was a definite query there -- like Dugan, the alpha needed to know where he stood. Only the truth of it was that without Bucky there as glue, Steve wasn't even sure where _he_ stood anymore. He was the squad's ranking officer, their tactical brain, their heavy hitter and their razor's edge, but he wasn't at all sure he could be their alpha anymore.

He turned his arm, presented his wrist to Monty, and dropped his gaze to the side. There were several hisses, something dropped with a thud, a shuffling step and a quiet curse. Then Steve felt the other alpha's growl. "Sod that," he rumbled, grabbing Steve's hand and turning it once more. "If you're having them, then you're having me. I'll not be left behind, Sir."

"What-" Steve started, then cut off with a yelp as Monty first licked at his knuckles, then bit when the blood didn't flow fast enough. And he was port wine, leather, lemon and steel, moss, prize roses, and ancient oaks, and he cleaned the blood from Steve's hand with a thoroughness that dared Steve, Captain America or not, to just bloody _try_ and stop him.

"What now, Captain," he asked when he'd finished, his eye bright, his colour high, and his jaw set and stubborn. 

Steve looked around the tent, lost and weary, and more than a little baffled now that his red, his rage was spread between them all, banked and waiting for the right fuel. The betas had tugged the bedding off both Bucky's cot and Steve's, and they'd raided Buck's foot locker as well, piling the bedding and clothes into the middle of the room, and setting the forage Dumdum had brought back from town around the edge, where they'd all be able to reach it if anybody took a notion.

"Food," Gabe said, stepping barefoot onto the makeshift nest and settling near the edge. "We all need to eat." 

"Then sleep," Jim agreed, quickly stripping off his boots to follow suit.

And just like that, just like it was the most natural thing in the world, the combined weight of the two Oughts, and the scent-ghost of their lost third drew the rest of them in. There were pickles and bread, preserved fruit, condensed milk, tinned oysters and carrots in mason jars, and even three tins of sardines to go along with the six bottles of hooch Dumdum had liberated from the bar. But most of all for Steve, there was quiet; a lull before the coming storm, a sense of being able -- just -- to lay his head down and rest while others kept watch against the darkness.

For just a little while, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit later than I'd wanted to be with this one, my fatal fungi, but here's hoping it's worth it. There will be two more chapters from here to the end. More than I promised -- and that's a good thing, right?
> 
> Thanks to all of you who're reading this and letting me know what you think as it goes along. It really helps a writer keep focused. You guys are great!


	12. Rare and Precious Chain

They all have nightmares. 

It's just part of the price they pay for what the Avengers do, for what they've all seen and survived – the cost of being strong enough to save the world over and over again. Anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, hyper-vigilance -- Steve's learned all the new, fancy names they have now to explain why any number of a war-pack might turn up in the common area well after lights-out and sit together, silent, weary, shaking, and numb -- but he still thinks of it as just 'the Midnight Watch'. 

With the Commandos, having the Midnight Watch usually involved cleaning equipment, mending uniforms, assembling and disassembling every firearm in reach, Not Talking About It, and alcohol. With the Avengers, it generally involves snack food, late night television in a darkened room, Not Talking About It, and alcohol.

Thanks to the serum in his blood, and how little sleep he actually needs to stay healthy, Steve gets the Midnight Watch most often. He's usually the one already there when (sometimes if) any of the others turn up to stare at the television screen along with him. When none of them do, he turns the volume up loud and loses himself in the droning ramble of products he'll never need, people he'll never know, fight, kill, or watch die, and lives he'll never need to save. 

Late night television is reliably awful, but it's also the reason why Steve realizes -- perhaps before any of the team actually realizes it – just what it is they're doing, why they're gathered around him like this, gently touching him, quietly challenging him, tickling his bleeding memories out of deep cover, filling up his heart and his living room with their quiet concern. 

It's an intervention. 

The thought sinks into him like lead as Tony presses his naked chest to Steve's and begs, "Just let us catch you now, Steve. Please." 

His skin is cool against Steve's flushed, fevered chest, but the arc reactor is a warm hum above the painful thudding of his heart, and Steve's brain is hooked and spinning on the realization. It's an intervention, like they do with alcoholics now, or drug addicts, or hoarders, or people who won't eat, or who cut themselves – people whose self destructive behavior scares those who love them into taking direct action against ...

And that's when the rest hits him. Those who love them. Who _love them_. Because you don't bother with something this hard, this intimately awful, unless you love someone too much to let them fall. Love is the only thing that can make people put their hand in when someone is burning down or bleeding out, and everyone else has run for the hills or walked off in disgust. Love makes people keep reaching for him as long as there's a chance he'll at least try to grab for their hands. 

Heat floods Steve's eyes. He hides it in the tousle of Tony's hair until he can steady himself against that realization, and the one that follows hard on its heels – that he loves them, too. That he has loved all of them for long enough that he can't remember what it was like _not_ to. That it's not strategy, him knowing their patterns, habits, and tells – it's not just leadership that makes him take the blame when a job goes bad; he loves them, all of them, and he wants to keep them safe, happy, and sheltered from every storm. It's even what he told himself when he set up the den; that he was keeping them all safe from himself.

He takes a deep breath, hears it roll, audible and anguished in his throat as he curls his hands to the soft planes of Tony's back, and feels the answering shudder of breath beneath his palms. They love him enough to drag him out of his hole, out of himself, out of the blank face of trying-not-to-want that he's been struggling to keep up for so damned long, and that _can't_ be just the heat talking. 

Steve can feel the second wave of it coming on. He can feel the surge of arousal, of animal _want_ pouring through him again; can feel himself throbbing deep inside. It's smoother, calmer than it was the first time, but the hunger's still there, and the scent of Bruce behind him is enough to make the omega in him tremble with it. And he knows now how painful that need will become if he denies it too.

But it's that realization of love in the immediate, unignorable present tense -- love that he fought, evaded, and surely doesn't deserve, but that's still stubbornly wrapped around him -- that shakes Steve to his core now. He wants it, wants to be worthy of it, to pour his own confused heart into it as well. It is so very, very easy for Steve to raise his wrist up to Bruce and make the offer – the request -- he had so desperately feared not three days before. 

The scent of Bruce's arousal spike is unmistakable, heady as it threads through Tony's sweetening musk and taints the room just a little more red, but his grip on Steve's wrist is steady. When he turns Steve's face up to his own, his eyes are dark, hungry, but tight with certainty and restraint. 

He demands Steve's clear consent, threatens openly to back it up, and Steve feels something hard and cold inside him crack in half. Even now, even against his better interests, the choice will still be his to make. They're all here to stop Steve from hurting himself, but if he still says no, they will force nothing on him. If he chooses to do this the awful way – to stubbornly cling to the empty space where he'd always wanted Bucky to be -- they will let him. 

They will hate it, and they'll hurt along with him until it's over, and Steve doesn't want that; not for him, not for them, and not even for Bucky. Bucky, he's damn well certain, wouldn't have wanted it either. 

"I want to belong with you," he tells Bruce, tells Tony, tells them all the truth he's only just realized himself, loose in his bones and blushing at the words. "If you want me." It's as close to begging as he's ever come in his life, and if he weren't so loose in his bones and hot in his skin, he'd squirm to hear himself.

Bruce uses Steve's untasted wrist to pull him to his feet and keep him right there, leaning into the alpha's gravity like he's helpless to it. Then he strokes one broad palm up Steve's arm, over his shoulder to curl around his neck – a solid, much-needed anchor that quells the needy tremble in Steve's gut even as it pulls him down close to Bruce's upturned face. 

"We want you, Steve," he says, folding him down into a kiss that feels like a promise, a defiant oath made to any comers. "We all want you." Steve can feel the others watching as Bruce tilts his head, slots them closer together and pries the kiss wide open, but he finds not a lick of shyness or a single twitch of fear inside himself as he yields to it all – the first willing surrender of his life.

Steve flinches as Tony slithers up against his back with bottle-chilled fingers. His scent is warm though, musky and sweet, and his beard is a delicious scrape as his lips trace points of fire along the naked line of Steve's shoulder. Steve shivers, hung between the solid press of Bruce's anchoring kiss and Tony's eager exploration -- he'd be panting, whimpering if his mouth wasn't so busy. He's aware, on some distant level, of the others moving around his apartment, murmuring to each other in low happy voices, but he cannot concern himself with it – not under the combined efforts of his own body and the couple balancing him between them.

Then Tony yanks his sleep pants off in a single jerk that sets Steve's half hard cock bouncing against his thigh – and all at once Steve remembers he can do more than just stand and take it. Tony is already naked, his cock hard and streaking slick along Steve's flanks as he ruts against him, but Bruce is still fully dressed. He manages to work the button-down free of Bruce's pants and get his hands underneath without ripping it, but Tony's clever, wandering hands make it hard for Steve to focus on little things like buttonholes.

The scrape of blunt nails through Steve's pubic hair is just one distraction too many. The lightning sensation shatters his kiss into a wet, desperate sound. "Please!" it scrapes out of him as he pulls free, fine cotton wound taut around his fists, Bruce's ribs flexing quick, full breaths against his arms. 

"What, Steve?" Tony asks, hands flat against Steve's belly, prick nudged firm and hot into the cleft of his ass, "Tell us what you need." And Steve would -- he absolutely _would,_ if he knew. His own prick is half hard and aching, but it's a hungry sort of feeling, that doesn't seem to hide agony beneath it like before. His skin is restless, sweat popping everywhere a grasping hand or rasping chin touches him, and he's shivering from the intensity Tony, impatient, tweaks a nipple, and yelping, Steve arches into the sensation, rutting his prick against the tight press of Bruce's erection. 

The alpha growls deep in his chest and ruts back. Then he scruffs Tony for a chiding shake. "Behave,” he says. The rumble of command goes right to Steve's knees -- he'd wobble if the pair weren't holding him up, and they all know it.

Steve can feel the shape of Tony's grin pressing at his spine. “I am behaving,” he murmurs, giving Steve's other nipple a gentler caress as he pulls his hands back down to stroke Steve's quivering belly.

“Behaving badly,” Phil says, mild, unexpected, and close behind him. His hand slides tempering caress along Steve's shoulder as he joins them, all smooth skin and calm balance. He reaches out to Bruce over the tangle of his grip on Steve and Tony both, pale wrist turned upward. "But I'm told that's part of the famous Stark charm."

Steve feels the huff of Bruce's chuckle as he nuzzles the skin between Phil's wrist tendons. "A very small part," he says, then bites -- too gently to mark, but strong enough to send an eager vibration through the agent. Steve groans, picking up the tremor through his skin, reeling at the agent's spike of hunger-scent. Then he ducks his head to lick at the arch of Phil's bicep where it spans his own grip on Bruce, and something in him cannot resist setting his teeth to that muscle, just to feel again the eager, quivering welcome against his back. Tony leans in, bites Phil's deltoid and shakes his head with a playful 'grr' -- all but drowned underneath the agent's shuddering groan.

Phil is panting, hard and leaking by the time they all let him go. A little relieved to have the focus shifted away from him, Steve focuses on catching his breath as the omegas behind him kiss like they're settling a grudge. It's only then that he manages to look around the apartment and notice they're alone. "Thor?” he asks, letting go of Bruce with one arm so he can pull Phil in and steal the kiss away from Tony. “Clint and 'Tasha. Why are they-”

"Don't worry 'bout it, babe," Tony chuckles, transferring his attentions to Steve's shoulder as Phil hums happily against Steve's lips. "It’s a beta thing. They’ll be back soon with food. I'm hoping for Thai. Can't wait to eat spicy noodles off your-”

His skin – all of it – gives an eager shudder at the thought of slippery, greasy weight, salty lips, tongues, teeth, and peppery burn. Steve pulls away to gasp before the idea can completely derail him. Food. Betas. Right.

"But Thor's not-" Steve starts to protest, but Bruce bites his neck, growling, and the thought frays apart again. "N'Tasha’s…"

Phil's voice is cool sanity even as his fingers trail below Steve's ass, smearing the gathering slick. “For this purpose, that’s where they fit,” he says over Steve's whine. “Thor can’t knot, Natasha doesn’t heat, but they can still bond in when the time comes. And they'll want to take care of the rest of us while we’re distracted.”

“Speaking of distracted," Bruce growls, letting go of Steve to make quick work of his own buttons, “Bedroom?”

“Mmm… Carpet?” Tony counter-offers, his beard tickling fire along the back of Steve's neck as his fingers seek deeply, boldly into his cleft. Calloused and nail-bit, Tony's fingers still set off fireworks as they find and firmly nudge Steve's entrance -- Steve is halfway to the floor in pure, animal reaction before the three of them catch him. 

“Oh God, please,” he breathes into the curve of Bruce's neck, unable to stop himself pushing back at Tony's hand, Phil's hand at his hip, Bruce's hands on his chest, anything, _anything_.

“Bedroom,” Bruce's voice is all command now, rumbling with red as he catches Steve's wrist and tows him along. "Now." 

Tony and Phil each slip in along Steve's side, and it's almost like being carried between them, and luckily they're not going far. He wants to just forget about things like doorways, furniture, and where his feet go, and just sink into the amazing sensation of _wanting_ this. Wanting _them_ , and all that they can give him. 

"Hang on," Phil says, ducking away and propping Steve against the wall so he can yank the blankets off the bed.

"Oh hey, there's a thought," Tony says, ducking away to help. Bruce looks up from shucking his pants to give an approving nod, and Steve can only be pathetically glad that someone thought about not ruining his favorite comforter before it was too late.

"So, Agent," Tony says, wadding up the sheets while Phil folds the blankets. "This gonna be a problem for you with Fury?" 

Steve can't help a quick glance at Bruce, expecting and seeing a scowl at the mention of another alpha, but Phil doesn't seem overly worried about it. "The Director doesn’t have authority here," he answers, setting the last blanket out of danger. "Towels?"

“Linen cupboard,” Steve pants, clenching his thighs as another heat flare rises through him. He pushes away from the wall, steeling himself for the short walk. But Tony is right there with a quick, unceremonious nudge, toppling Steve straight over onto the unmade bed.

"Or we could maybe just use the whole _crate_ of them that's out by your entryway," he giggles with exactly the sort of smart-aleck expression that should really set Steve's teeth on edge. But instead the sway of his hips, the flex of his ass as he turns and heads for the bathroom makes Steve want to roll Tony under and kiss that smirk right off him. And that thought, combined with the silky feel of the sheet beneath his back makes him writhe, pant, and stretch with impatience for Tony to come back and touch him.

Phil is clear headed enough to take Steve's revenge for him though; a swift, hard swat that makes Tony jump and yelp as he passes, then pause to stick out his ass and wiggle it for more. "Towels, Stark," the agent tells him as he turns to climb onto the bed and into Steve's reach, something awed and tentative in his eyes. His hand hovers, close enough to warm the air over Steve's chest, but it isn't until he pushes up into it that Phil sighs and settles close.

Steve palms up his naked back, sliding over scars that pain them both until he can grip Phil's neck and bring him down to kiss. Or that's the plan, anyway, only a hard knot of gristle next to his spine rolls beneath Steve's thumb, and he pauses, startled. Phil's expression flickers with real worry for a second as Steve rolls the knot under his thumb, and then turns his face warily into Phil's throat and takes a sampling breath high and tight over his tongue. "You’re bonded,” he says as he lays back, confused, and strangely disappointed.

Phil smiles then, and his hand slides down along Steve's ribs. “Not to Nick Fury, I’m not,” he says, then nuzzles down close and warm to whisper in Steve's ear, “My bonded don’t mind this, Steve. But if you’re worried, you can ask them when they come back." And then he turns his head just enough, putting that hard little knot and the ring of scars around it right up close to Steve's nose, where he can hardly help slipping out a tongue to taste. 

And there is Clint, bread-warm and woolen with a sharp edged sweetness running like cold water through it. And there, like a shadow so familiar you'd hardly think to notice her, is Natasha; just a breath of dry wood, barely a tickle of musky amber, one fleeting stab of heady rose. Steve realizes distantly that he's shaking as Phil's hand curls over his and presses the tremors out. His eyes are swimming, heart thundering in his chest because he knew -- he _knew_ \-- that it was supposed to be okay now, that Oughts could go with whomever they chose, even if there wouldn't be children, but.... He squeezes his eyes tight shut and drags a breath through the sudden weight on his chest. This makes it real -- this omega, bonded -- truly bonded -- where he wanted to go, not where his biology pushed him.

Then Tony is back, all leer as he drops towels on the bed. "Who'd have thought," he crows, clambering over them both as if he's made of elbows. "Our little Agents in a Poly-bond! And with a null and a beta, you kinky little -YIE!" Distracted, Steve misses the mechanics of Phil's move, but it's sudden, alarming, and winds up flipping Stark neatly over, and landing the playboy with his face pressed into the mattress at Steve's hip, and a healthy bite of his own ass clenched in Phil's jaws.

Steve laughs as Phil gave a fierce little headshake before releasing his mouthful with a lick, and saying, “Not every bond is about sex, Stark.” He slips away then, scoots upward and leaving cool air along Steve's back for the second it takes Bruce to settle into the space. 

“The hot ones are,” Tony says into the mattress as he slithers over onto his side and snuggles in, knees curled up over Steve's head, face so close that his breath is a wet blaze along the crease of Steve's hip. Steve holds his breath, remembering pain as his prick lurches, throbbing up toward those open, inviting lips, but hopeful, hungry all the same. Tony flicks a glance up at him. "You okay, Cap?"

Steve takes a breath, considering. He's surrounded now, Bruce breathing, slow and even against his back, each flex a tickle of soft hair against his skin, Phil above, warmly tracing fire into the glands of Steve's throat, Tony with stiff cock and hungry eyes at his front, and it's been a long time since he's been this safe, this ok. He nods, takes Tony's prick in his hand by way of invitation, and bends his neck to Phil's caresses. Bruce's hand traces gentle patterns along Steve's side, and his lips sweep, hot and damp over his spine, but the alpha's cock is a bar of velvet iron pressed close along the crack of Steve's ass, and it's alarming how much Steve wants to just spread himself to it, sink down, push up, and surrender.

He takes another breath, so deep and full of Tony's musk that Steve shakes with it, and makes himself give up the words. "Yeah... it's just, before, it really..." Tony curls his clever fingers around Steve's prick, and for a moment, he loses the words. He remembers not to clench too hard, as he frots helplessly into the just rough-enough grip, then yelps when suddenly, unexpectedly, he feels a wet, bright swipe of tongue across the head of his cock.

"No knot this time, ” Tony murmurs, stroking long and sure and perfect, and oh God, Bruce's hand is slipping down over his hip to join it, their fingers twining around him, tight and slippery in the sudden gush of precome. “Your body's had a taste of what it wants...” And Tony ducks his head again, licks again, wrings a noise from Steve that starts somewhere behind his balls. He grunts, pleased, then sucks Steve deeply, wetly in, and thrusts pointedly into Steve's shaking fingers. Phil reaches down, twines his own fingers with Steve's and guides him into a rhythm that makes Tony purr and swallow greedily.

"Hurts now?" Bruce mumbles against Steve's shoulder, cock sliding through the slick crack of Steve's ass as Tony's movements set them rubbing against each other. Steve shakes his head, then remembers neither of them is looking. Even so, a negative grunt is about all he can manage under the onslaught of sensation and spiraling hunger.

"Say so if it does," Phil says, tightening their grip just a little as Tony's precome makes things slicker. "He'll stop if you need him to." He's curled against the headboard, as if to shelter them all from above, and when Steve cranes back his head, Phil's smile is reassuring, but his eyes hold such hunger Steve can feel it in his bones. He wants, he realizes all at once, very much to taste it. He reaches up with his other hand, arching long as he can, pleased when Phil ducks to kiss him, the angle awkward and eager and perfect. 

Tony grabs Steve's knee while he's distracted, hefts it up over his shoulder and creates just space enough for Bruce's prick to slide freely between. The half-swollen knot rubs over Steve's wet entrance with each rocking thrust, and he's already so close, so very close that all he can taste in the tangle of tongue and hand and prick and skin is all of them together -- Cream, burnt sugar worship, pepper, sunlight, wine, blood-flushed skin, tea, greed, bitter pine, almond, silver, and red cinnamon candy; salty with mercy, blooming with trust. Phil's kiss tastes of all of them, blurred and smeared and tangled up until there is no scent of one but for another three entwined. Steve is dizzy, buzzing and almost overwhelmed with it -- and baffled at how he can possibly want more. 

Yet he does. He wants the burst of rose, the ice water flicker, the blue-blooming ozone, the cordite, steel and bitter, cheap gin as well, wants them so much his hips twist with it. But Tony swallows around him then, Bruce pulls back for a long, rough slide, and Phil breaks the kiss a million years too soon; distracting him utterly. 

"Back soon," Phil murmurs, flushed and dark eyed as he slips from the bed, and then from the room, and only then does Steve realize that he can hear his pack's voices in the hall, and can smell the salty, meaty tang of Chinese food.

 _'Noodles...'_ he thinks, giddy enough to giggle in the brief second before the bedroom door's closing and Bruce's huffing grunts against his neck drive it from Steve's mind. Because that knot is what he wants -- that thick, hard swell of Bruce's stealthy strength -- wants it in him as much as he wants the slick lave of Tony's tongue, the heat of his wicked mouth. He wants it, but canting his hips and wriggling does nothing to convince Bruce to give it to him. Steve groans, squirming enough to dislodge Tony, but it's in vain. Bruce just goes still, grips his hip hard, his knot ridging up under Steve's hole like a threat or a promise -- too far forward for Steve to impale himself, no matter how he might thrash.

“Tell him he can, Steve,” Tony says, low and smooth from between his thighs. His lips are slick, wet and red, his eyes wide and dark. “He needs to hear you say it’s okay.”

"Yes!” the bleat crushes out of him, and Steve gropes back for Bruce's hip as Tony groans and sucks his cock in again. “Please, Bruce. God, please, just-” 

Then finally Steve feels him pull back, shift his hips just so, and – all the air leaks from Steve's lungs in a grateful whine -- then the point of Bruce's cock nudges home, and Steve is spreading wide around it, shuddering, _keening_ as pleasure seethes and coils tight inside him. Growling, Bruce bears him over, and fucks in, hard and deep and perfect. Steve manages to hold his weight on his elbows and one bent knee, the position providing just traction enough to keep himself from crushing Tony as Bruce fucks Steve's cock right down into his face. 

Steve can feel Tony groan around him, spurring the tension higher, tighter, and Tony's prick is so hard and red and right _there_ , leaking so sweetly, so desperately across Steve's cheek that he has to turn his head and taste it -- draw all of Tony's ire and fire and sass and flash into his mouth and suck like he could swallow it whole.

It's indescribable, the sound Tony makes, the desperate arch as he thrusts away from the bed, the taste of his prick, the feel of it gliding over Steve's tongue to knock at his throat, the way he grinds his face into Steve's balls, clenches his fingers on Steve's hips, holding him up against Bruce's thrusts and the knot that's pushing just a little harder, just a little closer with each shove. 

Almost perfect, almost right, almost, _almost_ enough. Steve whines, groans, pleads with every pore of his skin until finally Bruce rears back snarling and shoves himself in. The shock of it goes through him like a shot, like a scream -- white hot, thrashing wild, and nothing at all like pain. 

Steve feels himself lock down around Bruce's knot as orgasm spirals up his spine and blasts every last shred of sense he's got into firework cinders. He's coming, and he's swallowing slick, bitter sweetness, and he's gasping, falling, and tears are on his face, and he's pinned around the most enormous pleasure he's ever imagined with hands soothing him, petting him, warm arms cradling him back against a solid chest, and Tony's voice a rough and loving murmur in his ear. 

“That’s right, Stevie, let go," he says, proudly wrecked and gorgeous, "It's fine, you’re fine. We’ve got you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for being late, my bog blossoms. Death in the family and all that; grieving processes are damned inconvenient, I must say. Still, I'm back on the nightmare now, and will be posting each of the remaining chapters (plus the meta too) as soon as they're through the beta-gauntlet. No brakes, go with God!
> 
> Thanks so very much to all of you who've been commenting to share your thoughts with me. I really appreciate it. Thanks also to those who dropped by my blog and tumblr to offer your condolences over Brother Godric. The outpouring of love for the little furry bastard has been just humbling. He's missed sorely, but loved greatly forever -- because the Internet IS forever, after all, isn't it?


	13. Call the Ships to Port

Walking away from Steve Rogers in that condition – kiss-drunk, sloe-eyed, naked, gorgeous and gasping for more – is one of the hardest things Phil Coulson has done in his entire life. If it weren't for the fact that he can hear his Bondmates talking to Thor in the hallway – Clint cheerfully heckling to cover his deeper emotions, Natasha laughing back, resonant, low, and concealing nothing – he would not move from the bed, would not so much as look away from the Captain's face until he'd memorized the look of perfect abandon there.

But as much as he wants to watch Stark and Banner melt away those last icy walls in Steve's eyes, he wants to have the touch of his Own that much more. He fought his way back from the edge of death for them, and so of course their gravity is enough to draw him away from the lure of tasting on his lips the moment of Steve's first knotting... _just_ enough. The walk to the door is a long one, and Phil is glad to find Natasha waiting for him on the other side when he slips out into the living room. 

“You all right?” she asks, tossing her dress aside and gathering Phil into her arms. Her breasts pillow soft against his ribs, and her lips skate the line of his throat as he nods, knowing that she won't believe him. He's all but overwhelmed, doesn't know how to feel or what to think – doesn't know anything for sure beyond that the Avengers are bonding together at last, that their fulcrum will be the man on whose character Phil has based nearly every moral judgment of his life, the hero he can still barely manage not to humiliate himself in front of... and that somehow, he might actually be welcome in that matrix too. He is humbled, awed, enthralled, and terrified, and even under torture, he couldn't say which he feels keenest or most.

Her fingers creep up his neck, stroke the bond-knot just below his hairline, and Phil can't help relaxing into her touch. Hers is smaller, more subtly hidden in the elegant sweep of the neck, but Natasha shivers into him and gasps when Phil returns her caress. Clint and Thor are in the kitchen, stashing what looks like a truly massive amount of food in the Captain's refrigerator, but Phil can smell arousal on them both, and it only adds to the storm building inside him.

"You want him?" Natasha murmurs against Phil's collarbone, and he nods. They both know which 'him' she means. "To take, or be had by him?"

"Both," he sighs around a shudder, holds her just a little tighter. "Neither. Just... what if he-" She bites his bare shoulder, digs in hard and shakes her head to silence him. It's reminder enough – of what is at stake, and of what is emphatically not. He's panting when she releases him and licks at the throbbing skin she's just marked.

"I want to watch you have him," she says, all cat-eyes and canary feathers in her teeth. Then she tiptoes up for a kiss, adding, "Both ways." Phil's heart lurches at the idea, and pressed to him as she is, he knows Natasha can feel it. She slips from his arms then, one hand curling around his cock in a brief caress as comforting as it is arousing, and heads toward the bedroom door with her perfect hips swaying. 

Phil obligingly turns to watch her retreating ass, and Clint slips, quiet as a shadow, up against his back. "They ready for us?" he asks once he's licked a greeting across Phil's bond-knot. 

"Not qui-" He's cut off by a keening yowl, a muffled wail, and a grinding sort of roar from inside the bedroom. They all freeze, knowing what that sound from Bruce Banner usually means, but there is no crash, no sound of splintering wood or smashing glass, and while there is definitely screaming going on inside Steve's bedroom, it's exactly the kind they've all been hoping to hear.

"Sounds like they are now," Clint laughs. Then he turns to nuzzle a kiss behind Phil's ear as Natasha opens the bedroom door and slips, quiet as a ghost, inside. " _You_ ready?" he asks, all strong hands and demanding lips, and Phil could fall into him and take everything he had to give without a backward glance if it were any other pack, any other omega spending himself in bright, pleading gulps behind that door.

"No," he admits the truth, because that's what they do with each other like this -- no lies, no masks, no convenient fictions standing between them. "But I will be." He walks them both to the door, Clint still draped like a living cloak along his back, and they peer inside together.

Banner and Steve lie cupped together in the center of the bed, their panting breaths perfectly timed, their eyes either closed tight, or rolled back in bliss. Stark, his beard, face, and chest streaked with gleaming silver milt, is tucked up against Steve's chest, petting and whispering. He flails when Natasha pounces on him, yelps and swears as she flips his shoulders flat to the mattress and pins him there so she can lick the shine from his face. Phil can see his eyes as he purrs and curls into her kisses -- dilated and glassy, eyelids hooded low over a fine, bright flush. 

Stark is flying high on the hormones Steve is releasing in steady, slow pulses, and giddy as any male would be to have a woman like their Nat kissing him as if he'd hid her soul under his tongue and she wanted it back. They watch, enthralled as Stark yields completely to her plundering kiss, even as he gives Steve's cock a few more pulls, gathering the bright release in the cup of his palm and then brings it up to slather Steve's dripping silver between Natasha's thighs.

The sound she makes as his coated fingers slip into her is nothing short of electric. Phil has to clench his thighs against a surge of his own slick as Natasha grinds down with a serpentine wriggle and a heartfelt Russian curse. The muscles of her thighs flex and flow as she rocks, kissing, biting, swearing at Stark to push harder, deeper, higher, _there_ , then Steve's hand curls up around her head, long fingers sliding through her hair as he turns her face to his. She kisses him like coming home -- hungry, hopeful, heavy with relief. The scent of her spending is a bright slash of crimson across the tapestry of sex and hunger, as familiar to Phil now as her low, guttural groan. He's never seen her come so quickly before, but the undertow of Steve's orgasm is obviously a powerful force, and the writhing grind of her hips looks like she's coping with the shock of it just fine.

"Christ," Clint murmurs, and his hips rut once against Phil's back, as if he can't help it. The denim grind of fly buttons over his erection reminds them both that, however enthralling the show, Clint is still far too dressed for the occasion. He backs off, stripping with manic speed, and distracted clumsiness. "Christ, that's just..." He flings his jeans and shorts aside, and slots himself into Phil's arms to slant a starving kiss across his lips, and paint a streak of precome along the length of his thigh. "I can't tell whether I want to break Stark's fingers off, or steal them," he murmurs through Phil's shaking groan.

"Like to see you try, birdbrain," Stark answers from the bed, all 'come at me bro' smirk before Natasha shuts him up with her tongue.

Phil bites a hard claim under the hinge of Clint's jaw, sucks it purple as he strokes their pricks together in one fist. "I'd rather watch you suck his cock instead," he murmurs.

"Yeah?" 

"Oh yeah," he smiles into another kiss, watching Natasha manhandle Stark back to hardness again. "He tastes like brilliant ideas and _terrible_ decisions."

Clint's grin is everything wicked. "My favorite flavor," he laughs, his hand a perfect weight on Phil's sacrum as he ruts into his grip one more time, then pulls away. "Coming?"

"After you," he smirks, giving a parting squeeze before shoving his lover toward the tangle on the bed. It's a game they play sometimes, seeing how close Phil can get, and how long he can stand to stay there, how long his lovers can keep him there, hovering on the near edge while his orgasm builds and builds and builds. The greedy gleam in Clint's eye alone is a strong indication that this match will be shorter than usual. Phil gives him an eyebrow-dare and pushes him in to take on his own handicap. 

He takes special care to display his assets to Phil as he slips into the gap Natasha's created between herself, Stark, and Steve. Phil takes special care to appreciate the show, the more so when Steve gathers Clint in at once, and Banner's hands help catch him close as they kiss. The other two unwind as well, Stark curling around Clint's back and reaching between them to catch more of Steve's milt so he can paint it in swirls and streaks across belly, chest, throat, and face.

Clint breaks the kiss to suck those fingers into his own mouth, and shudders hard, mouth wide, spine bow-arched into Stark's steadying grip as he rolls headlong into the shared release. Phil can’t breathe, can’t see for the effort of holding back his orgasm, but a steadying hand falls on his shoulder and presses him to the wall while he catches his breathe. Phil lets himself lean into the touch for a moment, then turns to dare a look at the bed, where Stark is whispering in Clint's ear s he paints the gleaming milt across his cheeks. Tasha, flushed and gleaming, is kissing Banner as though she means to devour him whole. 

“On Asgard,” Thor murmurs, hand still anchored, “warriors do something like this; bathing each other in the blood of a mighty beast they have worked together to slay, and counting themselves allies ever afterward. But this seems…”

“Less bloody,” Phil supplies, distracted and a little breathless as he watches Clint roll Stark onto his back with a whelming kiss. 

“Deeper,” Thor corrects, and when he steps close along Phil’s side, it’s urgently clear that he’s as naked as the rest of them, and not the least bit disinterested in the proceedings. “As the sharing of oath and blood from vein to vein makes a brother from one unrelated, or the taking of a wife makes kindred of her line.” Phil nods, hearing the flicker of pain that briefly tints Thor’s words, and knowing there’s nothing he could, or should say about it.

“Pack bond,” he says instead. “The strongest kind we know how to make.”

Phil feels the flexing sigh of wide ribs against his shoulder, then Thor’s beard just scratches his ear as the Thunder God leans low to ask, “Then tell me, Man of Midgard, what role one of Asgard must play within this bond my comrades build.” 

“Can.” Phil swallows hard as Thor’s cock knocks gently at his thigh from behind. In so many ways he is so nearly human, this alien prince, perhaps in this way too, he is just close enough. “Can you smell them?” he asks, nodding toward Banner and Steve, tied together now, and swamped in the feedback loop of their shared orgasm and the echoes it rings off the others. “Open your mouth, taste the air in the back of your throat; do you feel it?”

Thor does so, a greedy, purring sort of snort, and the hands around Phil’s shoulder curl a little tighter. “Aye,” he rumbles, nothing like angry now. “It stirs me.” 

Phil nods, relief and a slight giddiness rippling through him as he leads Thor to the bed, elbowing Clint pointedly out of the way so he can draw the prince down to Steve’s side. Clint grumbles, but Natasha helps him roll Stark to the side, and the secondary tangle of hands and teeth and tongues continues as Phil guides Thor’s hand to Steve’s slow-pulsing, steadily leaking prick. Steve shivers, groans low in this throat, and the slick, translucent release pulses from him a little harder, viscous and hot as it coats their fingers, and smelling of pure, shivering relief. And of safety. And of home.

“What is it?” Thor asks, bringing his wet hand to his face and sniffing deeply before he takes a tentative lick. “This is not…” he licks again, this time groaning with relish. “This is not as a man’s seed, or a maid’s spend... It is something more.”

_Trust a fertility God to know the difference,_ Phil thinks, stroking the potent milt along his own throat, his face, and into his armpits where his skin glands are already sweating his hunger, his readiness out into the air. “It’s heat-release,” he answers, shivering at the instant contact high, then curling gratefully into the sleepy grapple as Steve’s huge, warm hands catch him close, and panting breath heats his neck. “Only happens when an omega in breed-phase is tied to an alpha and mph-” his explanation founders on the sudden invasion of Steve’s tongue, and dear sweet God, he could come from that kiss alone.

“You too,” Steve gasps as he breaks free. Then his teeth are dragging along Phil’s jaw in fiercely starving nips. “Both. Want you both…” Banner rumbles a wordless agreement, groping past Steve’s hip until he finally catches Thor’s arm and tugs him in, close and tight to their tangled sprawl. One massive thigh nudges up between Phil’s for a moment, trapping Thor’s blunt, thick cock in the crease of his ass, and he can’t help keening into Steve’s kiss as a surge of hopeful slick uncoils inside him.

Then Thor is leaning over him, a press of weight that is breathless and perfect. There’s a maddening tickle of long hair over his chest and belly as he bends sidelong low, and… “Jesus…” That’s Stark’s voice, awed and breathless, and Steve lurches against him suddenly, his kiss shattering into a strangled gasp that wrings a helpless groan from Banner. And Phil simply can’t _not_ look down to watch as Thor pulls Steve’s prick into his mouth with one long, hungry slide.

Banner grunts then, wordless, urgent, reaching blind. Steve’s hand tangles with his for a moment, but Bruce pries loose with a growl, and grabs a handful of Thor’s hair to tug. Phil’s building sex-fugue clears for an alarmed moment when he sees the steely, furious look in Thor’s eyes. But then he glances from Steve’s slack, blissed out expression to Banner’s eager, but unhostile one, and finally turns that confusion to Phil. “This… is unwelcome?” he asks. 

Banner shakes his head, tugs again. “No.” The word is thick, rough, and hungry. “Give.”

Thor’s glance flicks back to Phil again, and he catches Banner’s wrist to stop the tugging. “He wishes me to stop?” 

Banner growls at the question, trying and failing to roll any closer, Steve bleating protest at the jostling, and in the sudden slash of frustration through the alpha’s scent, Phil understands. “No,” he says, urging Thor to follow. “He can feel the bond from inside, but he can’t taste it. He wants you to share.”

Phil gasps as he feels Thor’s prick lurch against him at the idea, then a moment later it slides between his wet thighs, rubbing slick along his own hard cock as Thor rolls across Steve’s chest to deeply kiss the alpha who’s knot-tied to him. Steve’s hands find Phil’s face again, turn it up to lick the greedy whine right off his tongue, slide his wet prick into the tangle between them, and -

“ _Jesus_ ,” Stark says again, voice tight with lust, his slick a copper-penny, sweet fruit tang across the mix of them. Thor growls deep in his throat and climbs right over Steve and Phil to push himself tight against Banner's back, not breaking the kiss even once.

“Way hotter than Jesus…” Clint says as they slot together, and Natasha snickers. Tony’s shrill laugh chokes short, plugged up thick and spooling out into a pleased purr. Natasha snickers again as she flops over sidelong across Phil's side, then makes that hissing noise of hers while Clint is silent, always silent when he’s close to coming. Stark is helping there, pushing lazy, slow and smooth into Clint's mouth, grinding backward onto his fingers. Phil can't be too jealous of the playboy's flushed, greedy smirk though – he's too busy putting every ounce of willpower he has into staving his own orgasm off.

"How do you," he gasps away from the kiss, strokes a gentling hand along Steve's brow as the tangle behind him breaks apart, slithers along the sheets, and clutches together again unseen. The urge to throw himself headlong into the bond, to share in that silence and storming pleasure is nearly overwhelming, but Phil is enjoying the perverse stubborn denial just as much... for now. "How does it feel," he asks, smoothing the planes of Steve's perfect chest as he tries to catch his breath and a bit of his control back. "For you?"

"Heavy...Full," Steve murmurs, eyes vague, smile beatific. "Like being...held. Rocked." He laughs once, a little breathless, wrinkles his nose and shakes his head. "Sounds so stupid. It's like..." A heavy, shaking breath that threads into a laughing moan. "It's like..."

"Being carried," Natasha murmurs against Phil's belly, her eyes slitted low and content as Clint rocks into her, lazily, rhythmically, a tide that's in no hurry. Her hands are slick and gleaming with Steve's release, and she idly paints the milt in arcane symbols along the inner plane of Phil's thigh, leaving maddening tingles beneath the shine.

"Seen," Clint hides the word between her shoulder blades, but when he glances up to meet Phil's gaze, his smile, sweetly open and stripped of its armor, stays contently in place.

"Trusted," Tony, his face pressed hard into the curve of Phil's hip, speaks at nearly the same moment, his voice low, shaking just a little. 

Thor is half a breath behind him with an awed, "Worthy," as he slips an arm around the hard curve of Bruce's waist and pulls him close with a shudder.

The damply ragged noise Bruce makes against Steve's neck might be a word, or just a sob of agreement. Either way, it draws Steve's hand back over his shoulder to tangle in Bruce's damp, thick curls, and he speaks as if for them both, voice shaking just a little on the word. "Wanted..."

And Phil can wait not one single second longer. The desire he's banked and tended so carefully since the first breath of Steve's heat reached him in the basement flares suddenly, high and hot and blinding. He's moving, twisting through the tangle of them all before the decision even registers, all their hands pulling him along, through, beneath them, until he's finally close enough, desperate enough to take Steve's cock, still hard, still _coming_ , deep inside him.

It takes one hard shove, Tasha's hands on his hips, Steve's hands on his belly, Stark's hands on his aching cock, and the bond smashes through him like a blaze of white fire. It courses in his bones, makes them sing crystal harmonics -- a chord of seven notes, a shape in eight dimensions, a new and silent word for Home.

"How does it feel?" Natasha's voice reaches him through the storm, curling soft as fur around him. "For you?"

And he's coming so hard he can make no sense of the word even as it drips like a pearl from his tongue, but he knows in his guts it's only truth. "Perfect," he gasps, "Perfect."

~*~

Most of them are sleeping, tangled around him in a sweet, sweaty, satisfied funk of sex and devotion that Steve just knows will scent his apartment for years to come. He's never been more awake, and at once less anxious, less concerned with any other thing he could or should be doing instead of sprawling here in this Gordian knot of skin and breath and heartbeats synched in time.

If he concentrates, he can find them all by touch alone, but some are more obvious than others. Bruce has unknotted and slipped free of him, but still clings, tucked under Steve's left arm with his head pillowed on his chest. Tony mirrors his pose under Steve's right arm. Their faces are so close they could kiss each other without stretching, if either were awake. He can feel the tickle of Thor's hair against his knee, Phil's head tucked back against his opposite hip. Natasha's breath is a damp, flexing softness against his elbow and Clint's cheek pins his hand to the mattress, but he doesn't _need_ the touch to feel them. 

They're already all right there... All of them. He knows, and doesn't question how he knows it, that this entangled feeling will fade, that this intense connection, this live current he can feel knitting them together like silk and breath and copper wire in a hurricane will level out in time. It will become background noise, the neutral field against which they'll all splash and clash in their varied, brilliant hues, but for now it's such a live, vital thing that Steve almost wants to give it a name and introduce himself. 

Except that's foolish, because it already knows him, balls to brains; all his befores and afters, all his free-fall moments of horrified, tumbling now, everything he ever feared or wanted. It knows, and perhaps that means they know as well? 

For a moment that's terrifying, and a moment later, when Steve's flash of panic splashes out across the whole of Them, even more so. But the emotion flickers and fades before any of the rest do more than grunt or wince, and Steve makes himself relax with a long, heavy breath. He knows better – just _knows_. His thoughts are his own, as theirs are their own; his secrets, his past, his dark, ugly corners, his flaws, his triumphs, all still his, to hoard or to share...

And Bucky is still there too. Steve grunts as that realization hooks into him; a deep spike of surprise and tangled griefgratitudepainlove that has Thor waking just enough to stroke his belly and murmur before falling back asleep. Natasha lifts up her head, peers at him, and then settles at once, her hand curled over his elbow, and he can _feel_ her slip back into her catlike doze. 

_'You're still here..._ ' he says, silent as a prayer to the empty, still place where Bucky has always belonged, to the hush that had lodged like a stone in Steve's mind for years. _'I was so afraid they would drive you out..._ ' But the still place is held, hovering cool and stable in the electric matrix of this vital, broken, breathing, perfectly misfit pack; preserved like the empty plate at Sunday Dinner, set week after week, faithfully, defiantly for the one who can't ever come home to fill it.

Steve feels himself smiling, even as his eyes heat and swim with longing. Then Tony grunts, rolls, and flops himself halfway across Steve's chest, head propped on one elbow, that elbow propped across Steve's collarbone. His eyes are pleased, smug, and sleepy, but the curl of his lip is just tentative enough to bypass the automatic defensiveness Steve has gotten used to putting up against Tony's idea of humor.

"I know why," he says, low as a purr. Steve raises one eyebrow, but lets his own lips quirk as well, and Tony's smile deepens by several wry shades. "Why I bug you. Why I piss you off." 

Steve slips his hand out from under Clint's head and brushes it up along Tony's back, saying, "You don't –"

But Tony flicks his fingers at Steve's lips like he's knocking the words right out of the air. "Bup bup bup," he tuts softly, "no fronting. I do piss you off, and it’s ‘cause I remind you too much of him, isn’t it? Of Bucky." The laughter's gone now, banked under sorrow that isn't entirely sympathy.

Steve strokes down his spine and back up again, torn between wanting to comfort his omega, and not wanting to lie. "Tony," he tries, "that’s not-"

"Not the only reason, no, I know that. And it’s probably not even the reason this fucked up thing we do started, but it’s definitely there." He lets his fingers trail across Steve's lips, half exploration, half plea for silence. "Look, Steve, I’ve got a lot of experience with being a stand in for someone else. I figured with you, I was just standing in for Howard, but now… now I don’t think so anymore." His fingers sweep down over Steve's jaw, calluses snagging on three days' growth of beard. "And I don’t think you do either, do you?"

"No. I don’t," Steve allows, digging the truth out of his habitual silence, an offering to the quiet reverence in Tony's eyes. "You are like Bucky in some ways. Smart mouth, chip on your shoulder," He flicks a glance down at the arc reactor, "making the best of something nobody had the right to do to you...and you’re kind of bad at following orders too," he adds with a smile.

Tony gives it back. "Okay, that’s fair, but only stupid orders… and orders I don’t want to follow. And orders that get given when I’m not paying attention. Other than that…"

"Other than that, you’re still a loose cannon," Steve chuckles, stroking the back of Tony's neck, where the cowlick would curl if his hair were just a little longer.

"Your loose cannon," Tony corrects, unsmiling.

"I…" Steve swallows. "Yeah."

"Just like _he_ was." 

And there's a flicker in Steve's belly, a crawling feeling across the back of his neck as he remembers the hell-raising look in storm-grey eyes, the daredevil grin in a choirboy's lips. "Yeah," he breathes, and it feels like letting go, but not like falling at all.

Tony leans down quick and drops an approving kiss onto Steve's nose. "So. You gonna get over it?" he asks. "'Cause it’s clear you love the guy, but I gotta tell ya, I’m tired of paying his bill, Cap."

Steve gives him the eyebrow. "Like I’m tired of paying Howards bills?" 

To his credit, Tony actually thinks about that, and the flash of reflexive anger fades out into a nod before he answers. "Okay, that’s fair too. Think we can zero out the ledger here?"

Thor rumbles a yawn, his stretch flinging a thick arm across Steve's pelvis and Tony's back. "I think you should try," he rumbles, the words half-muffled in Steve's hip, "for I grow weary of your feuding, and would have more peace in our home."

"Word," Clint adds without a blink. "You two fight over the stupidest things."

Natasha stretches, and curls into him with a smirk. "I think it’s cute," she says, and that gets Clint's eyes open at last.

"You think spiders are cute," he accuses, smiling.

"That’s because spiders are cute."

"Some spiders," Bruce stirs to add his two cents. "Others are just useful." Then he tilts his head back to look between Tony and Steve with what can only be called fond exasperation. "And I won’t say I haven’t considered shoving you two into the Hulk Tank to fight it out when you get really bad.

"Oooh," Tony gives a wriggle. "Fight, or fuck? I like it! Jarvis will make book, and we can sell subscriptions on the internet."

"Tony," Steve bleats, mortified, even though through the bond he knows damned well it's all bull, and he's only saying it to get this exact reaction.

Phil stretches and turns, rolling his head onto Tony's bent thigh to look up at them with a smile that looks bland, but positively bristles with wicked mischief. "The Director _has_ given me authority to lock the two of you in the brig together if you cross a certain line."

"I myself have considered Holmgang as a solution to the problem in the past."

Tony peers down at Thor. "Okay, do I want to know what that is?"

"Almost certainly not," Thor grins. "Peace between you would hurt far less."

"Right! So," Tony says, too loud, too cheerful for their private quiet, as though the audience makes it official. "Zero balance, right Steve? Let Bucky and Howard pay their own damned balances?"

"Deal," Steve says, and leans up to kiss him. "That is, I’ll try if you will."

Tony grins then, and hell lights up in his eyes as he poked Steve in the sternum. "Good. Because my next heat, I’m coming to find you, big fella."

"What?" Steve cranes a glance at Bruce. "But-"

Tony catches his chin with a finger, and returns Steve's gaze up to his own, still beaming as he declares, "Oh, it’s on. No debate; I’m gonna climb you like a tree and rub all over you till you alpha up and put that gorgeous knot you have to good use." He braces his arm across Steve's chest and rests his chin on his wrist, like it's all said, signed, and settled. "And just so you know, I’m gonna enjoy every second of it, before, during, and after, whether we fight like bitches the whole time or not, so you," he chucks a finger up under Steve's chin, "might as well start getting used to the idea right now."

And really, Steve can't help laughing. So like Tony to offer something this precious dressed up as a challenge. "And your alpha thinks what of this idea, exactly?" he challenges back himself.

"His alpha thinks it’s hot as hell," Bruce replies, and Steve can feel him smile against his shoulder. "And he hopes he gets invited for sloppy seconds. Believe me, you’ll want someone to tap out to. Tony’s insatiable when he’s heated. I barely get enough time between knots to take a piss."

"Tony’s always insatiable, Brucie," Tony declares, leaning over to plant a kiss on Bruce's temple before rolling back to stretch out long. "In fact, Tony could go another round now, actually, if anybody else is up for it."

And Steve thinks about it, especially when both Thor and Natasha raise their heads, share a look of silent invitation that echoes across the bond they've newly created, and then roll toward Tony with maching, lecherous grins. But he's comfortable, sated and easy, with hours to go before the heat wells up in him again, and he finds, as he resettles himself in a new tangle of four, that he's more than content just to watch -- it's what he wants. 

And for once there's no question in his mind as to whether he deserves to have it or not.

~*~

There is a word -- a sharply precise word, all clean angles and sanity -- that clears the throbbing chaos from his mind, settles it all down smartly as if shot in the head, and lets him breathe. The air tastes of terror, shit and blood, and something tells him this is not unusual.

He is shaking, wet, and naked, and both his hands are stained red to the elbows. Something tells him this is also not unusual. Two men lie at his feet, chests and bellies gaping. Two more fill up the doorway with guns, rank sweat, and alpha bravado. He can taste how close each one is to breaking, torn between muscling his rival out of the way to take up the challenge of his unblinking stare, and shoving his rival into his reach just to watch him fall. If either were allowed to shoot him, they'd have done so already. 

He turns his back on them, scanning the room for familiar elements, finding only a few where they do not belong. The clothes are subtly different to what he remembers. The guns a little less so. There is no sign of the cryo chamber. Instead they had him on a gurney; fabric straps instead of steel bands. There is no headset, no hulking, hooded machine waiting to tell him who he's going to become this time. There's only a square table and bench, both bolted to the floor, and a wide pane of mirrored glass. 

This is not the Red Room.

This _is_ unusual.

He ignores his reflection in the one-way glass, sits at the table and waits, blood and water dripping from his flesh and steel hands. He is patient now that his disorientation has passed, and more than willing to wait. It's not long before the meat in the doorway stir apart to let the Voice come through. 

The Voice is tall, dark of hair, square of build; wears the uniform and the authority like one who grew up craving it, but the clothes smell of dust and mothballs, and do not match in what the dead men and living meat wear now, and the voice's scent carries a high, nervy excitement on it. As if he's getting away with something. 

"Are you finished, Comrade?" he asks in Russian, eyebrow arched wry, sweat beading his upper lip, accent newly moved, and at great effort, to the Captiol.

He tips his head a fraction. "I do not appreciate being lied to." The eyebrow invites elaboration, and he shrugs again. "This is not Moscow. This is not 1983." He tips a nod down to the cracked human shells cooling on the floor, and gives a distant ghost of a smile. " _They_ are not Recall Engineers, and you are not Vasily Karpov, though you are wearing his clothes." 

The Voice looks like he wants to take a step back, but realizes that there is nowhere he can go that the Winter Soldier could not find him to extract his answers. So he scowls and approaches the table instead. "I am Aleksandr Lukin, Karpov's protege and heir, and you have work to do, Soldier," he says, and the right elements of the keywords are there, but he hasn't said them in the right order, at the right pitch, and so they don't _take_ the way he expects them to.

The surprise must show on his face, because the Voice smiles, taking it, perhaps, for a sign that his killer assassin has been triggered to safety. It is that, as much as anything, that makes him decide to sit and listen; to see what has become of the world, and the pitiless, efficient machine he remembers being part of. "Whatever the People require, I will do." He gives the expected answer, folds his mismatched hands onto the table before him and watches this Lukin swallow revulsion at the stains. He will smile over that later, he decides. For now, he stares pointedly at the file folder in Lukin's hands.

"There is a message the People need to send to the world – a simple statement that must be made loudly, clearly, and in such a way as it cannot be hidden or denied," Lukin says after a moment. "No grey area, no room for equivocation; this lesson must be unmistakable, you understand?"

So it will be a public hit with many witnesses present; guards to avoid, family members to scar for life, and heavy press coverage if possible. Political assassinations are so damned dull. He offers Lukin only a nod though, and asks, "How long will I have to accomplish the objective?"

Lukin smiles. "The enemy's routines are largely established, and not overly private. He will give you plenty of access and opportunity. It should not take long."

He glances at the dead men and risks a tiny curl of smile. "Then why do you need me? Anyone with a scope could do that." He knows his worth. He knows his risks. The fact that they did not take that knowledge from him before they even allowed him to awaken is proof that this Lukin does not know either.

"It is not that simple," Lukin says, and opens the file at last. "The enemy is a hero: a corrupt, capitalist symbol, outdated and obsolete, but still with some ... substance behind his reputation." He sets a photograph down, turns it upright. As his gloved hand lifts away, he sees a man photographed from behind, his face turned in heroic profile. He is handsome in the way that Western movie stars are, with light hair and eyes the exact color of his blue costume – it reminds him of something uncomfortable until he realizes it is meant to be a stylized American flag. The costume would look far more ridiculous but for the fact that it is filthy, singed and torn in ways that only happen in fierce combat. There is a stubbornness to the jaw, and a canny resolve under the weariness in those blue eyes, and yes, this is a man one must kill at a distance. He puts out a red finger, and draws the photograph closer, considering. 

"Your shot must be precise," Lukin says, as if to a novice. "A major artery, or the heart. Anything less immediately fatal, he will regenerate."

He huffs, more interested now. A super-powered American. He has not killed one of those before... that he remembers. Aloud, he only says, "New York."

Lukin nods. "Yes. I am told your vocal camouflage for that region is quite good."

He shrugs, slipping into English almost before he's realized he means to. "Sure. S'easy. 'Less you're polite to 'em, New Yorkers don't look at nobody twice."

"Excellent," Lukin switches to English with suspicious ease for a Commissar. He pulls a plastic bag from the file, a scrap of burned, bloodied plaid sealed inside it. "This is your prey, Winter Soldier," he says, and hands the bag over.

The seal splits apart easily, but he is unprepared for the way the scents inside it affect him. His gut clenches, empty, angry; he can smell ozone, steel, sex and mud, can taste cheap gin and cornbread in his throat; there is a thud of fists into flesh, wet, rasping breaths that sound as if someone is dying, and a burn of rage, a surge of lonely pride, a hard-wrung, bitter sense of loss that strikes through him like one of his own bullets. Training keeps him still, fiercely impassive, but inside his skin, the Winter Soldier is _shaking_ with the wretched smell.

"What did he do?" he asks when he is able to speak again. It is not a question he thinks he has ever asked about a job before, and he is just as surprised to hear it out of himself as Lukin is.

"That does not matter," Lukin scowls. "Can you do your duty, Winter Soldier? Can you find me this man?"

He raises the bag to his face again, opens his mouth and draws another deep, tasting breath over his tongue. (Blood, dirt, av-gas, pitch, and under that, cream, warm linen, and salted caramel.) 

Then he nods, nothing but certain. "I can find him. I could find him in my sleep."

~* The End *~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And as it says above, my poison dart frogs, the story's done. That is, it's as written as I want to make it. Yes, I can hear you screaming -- it delights my black little soul. 
> 
> But just think -- of such endings as this are remixes made, MIRITE? And as always, remixes and remixers are welcome. All's fair in fanfic and doomsday machines, I've always said.
> 
> The next chapter here will be the promised metadata, but at this point I want to thank again the betae who convinced me not to just punch 'delete' on this whole thing when it started getting all problematical, and the commenters who kept me company on the long haul from first chapter to last.
> 
> Next thing I write, so HELP ME, will be short enough to post all in one damned go.


	14. Specific Cultural Dynamics at Work In the World of Changeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is not the fiction you're looking for. Or... well... maybe it is, but it's meta, not storyline. And really not sexy at all.

In order to write an effective AU like this one, it's necessary to ask a lot of 'why's. Since many readers of _Changeling_ asked to see my answers to those whys, here are a few of them.

First of all: _Why would men EVER need to get pregnant and bear children when biologically, the human female is so much more ideally suited to that task?_

In this world, the Jotun invasion happened far earlier in Human history than in movie canon. And also, instead of a raiding force, as was demonstrated in the movie Thor, the Jotuns sent an occupying force with intent not to take back the resources of Midgard, but to remain there and take the whole place. Their approach to this was slightly more efficient than the early Mediterranean and later European cultures though; instead of bothering to enslave the natives, they went straight to a plan of two-or-three-generation genocide. They bypassed human warriors (such as they were in the Stone Age,) and focused their attentions on finding and killing human females.

The reason for this difference in policy is that Laufey is of the caste of Jotun who never assumes a shape that can carry children, however Skadi, the King at the time of this invasion was a mother, and understood the vulnerability of a culture whose childbearers come under direct threat. (As stated in the story, Jotuns do not have a male and a female gender, but rather are fully hermaphroditic, and capable of either impregnating, or becoming pregnant, depending on their will.)

Ergo Skadi ordered raid after raid on different human populations on all the continents of Midgard, doing massive damage to the numbers of women and girls there. In some later cases, Jotuns began to assume human shape to undermine the remaining human resistances, and it was at this point that Asgard intervened. But the damage to humanity was done. The human female population had dropped well below species-critical numbers. (At its lowest, perhaps 5% of all humans were female.)

When the Jotun invasion was stopped, and its armies driven back to Jotunheim, Freya learned what had been done on Midgard, and decided it merited retribution from her. She cursed all those Jotuns who has assumed the form of human females to remain that way, and to life out their lives as such, forgetting that they had every been anything else. Their shapeshifter nature meant that they lived normal human lifespans, and then died, still under the Asgardian Queen's curse, but they were prolific while they lived, and within two generations, their half-human children had mutated to take up the childbearing slack.

Because this occurred during the Stone Age rather than the Bronze or Iron ages, there was no written record of it, or of humanity ever having less than four genders. There are some songs among the Australian Aboriginal tribes, and there are some pictograms that would reflect the difference if anthropologists knew what they were looking for and at, but to the people of this world, four genders is just what it means to be human.

 

_So explain this Omega thing please. How does it work?_

(Okay, here is where you skip if talk of butts and the stuff that comes out of them. You have been warned.)

An omega male is born with a vestigial womb in his lower intestines. When he is a child, it is little more than a bump, like a tiny, densely muscled diverticule off his small intestine. When he reaches puberty, depending on his health, his diet, and certain environmental factors, it will either develop further, producing an omega male who, under the right conditions and with the right stimulus, can conceive and carry a child, or else it will atrophy, and produce a null male who will not reproduce at all unless he gets very lucky and manages to be father a child on a woman. (This is not an access problem, as null males make extremely stable, safe mates for women – it's actually a hormonal problem, since omega males do not produce a lot of testosterone at the best of times, and null males don't produce much more.)

When a healthy omega comes to puberty in a safe environment, with plenty of food, and a pack around him providing the sense of stability he craves, the demi-womb will stabilize into a permanent organ over the first year of puberty. After that, he will experience a heat every month, but it is not necessarily a fertile heat, it is really more of a mate-drawing heat. The omega's system sacrificed the ability to make certain less-necessary, but still valuable hormones in favor of being able to carry the infant to term, and so these heats induce alphas, who produce more of the missing hormones than THEY need, to sort of... share the wealth. This is how the presence of omegas in the human genome gave rise to the presence of alphas – mates with more of the hormones they needed got more access to omegas, and thus were able to pass on those genes to further generations. 

Under normal, healthy conditions, an omega who has had repeated sexual contact with one alpha over the course of several months, will be triggered into a fertile, breeding heat a couple of times a year. This happens when the presence of a consistent chemical signature tells the omega's system that the odds for a safe, protected pregnancy are high. Over the course of three months or so, the demi-womb will grow to about the size of a fist. 

Omegas have about three to five feet less small intestine than other males do, in order to make room for the potential baby – because of this, they are much pickier about food, and have very good scenting capabilities in order to be sure they don't poison themselves with spoiled goods. Omegas have, consistently, the most sensitive, discerning noses of any humans. Part of this is due to the need to be able to analyze their food, but another part of this is down to their need to correctly assess the status, mental state, and mood of the humans around them. Being pregnant makes you automatically more vulnerable to all kinds of violence and neglect, so being able to predict and avoid it was just something they needed to be able to do, and the scenting ability was the quickest way to manifest that. Omegas are better at tracking, and at social manipulations because of this, so it's only a small logical step from that to understand how they would become the anchored center of almost all pack structures.

Here's how the breeding heat progresses for an omega male. 

* A few days before the pheromones become detectable to other individuals, the omega will essentially stop eating. This is in order to clear fecal matter from the lower intestine and colon. In order to maintain energy and hydration during this time, omegas begin to crave high calorie, high fat liquids and semisolids. (A side note -- lactose and sugar sensitivities are very rare in omegas because of this particular dietary quirk.)

* As the heat ramps up, guardian muscles above the colon and the demi-womb/diverticule lock down, making defecation actually impossible. If the omega eats solid food -- most particularly high-fiber food -- during this time, they tend to throw it right back up again. This is one of the many reasons why omegas have a greater scent-discernment and analysis capability than other rankings do. Their noses are hardwired to their stomachs so they know what's safe for them to eat and when.

* Once the guardian muscles clamp down, the walls of the colon begin to secrete an antibacterial, hormone laden substance not unlike a human male's precome. For obvious reasons, digestive bacteria in the reproductive organs is Not A Good Thing. It's at this stage that the heat scent becomes detectable to others -- enticing, but not compelling as of yet. This is good, because the effect of this secretion is similar to a low-level fever, and most omegas are NOT interested in sex when they've got achy joints, a slight headache, and some cramping going on.

* The fever breaks after three to five hours, depending on the length of the fast before it, and the omega at that point begins to feel, and hormonally project the strong urge to mate. Depending on the omega's chemical state (how long it's been since he's been sexually exposed to alpha hormones, how much emotional and environmental stress he's under, the presence or absence of strong threats of violence or disease in his environment, time elapsed since his last breeding heat -- all are factors here,) his heat will last anywhere from 12 hours to 5 days.

* Once a heat breaks, the omega will generally want to sleep for a full 24 hours. This is to facilitate conception, presuming the omega is in fertile phase at the time of his heat. During this time, his hormonal output tends to induce strong protective instincts not only in the alpha he's been with, but in any betae and other omegas near him. In high-tension, high-risk situations (such as a duress-breeding -- where an alpha exploits the heat-state to get sex from an omega who has otherwise rejected him -- fully as socially and legally disallowed as any other kind of rape, but in this society it's a hair-split difference, because it can ONLY happen to males) the omega will not sleep at all afterward, for obvious reasons. It is generally presumed that it's during the post-heat sleep that conception happens if at all, however this is a myth that has been soundly disproven in the modern century.

A non-fertile heat is similar to this in events, but is less extreme in terms of how long it goes on, and how painful it will be for the omega if he cannot or will not get access to alpha hormones. Essentially, think of this as an extreme form of addiction detox for the omega; survivable, but hell on earth while it's going on. 

In Changeling, the reason Steve triggered into a full on breeding heat without prior access or exposure to an alpha, was because of a) the super serum making his breeding process terrifyingly efficient once it was given the chance to omega up on him, and b) because he triggered himself. All his gear that he had with him when he went down was stuff he'd had in the combat field – it smelled strongly of his alpha self. However one thing the serum couldn't do was activate both sets of the glands he carries at once. So once he'd been in omega phase long enough to trigger off himself, it was not going to go back into the box until it had finished its process dammit. He went through a physical process that takes most omegas three months, in three weeks. And people wondered why he was cranky and shy and in a freaked-out headspace – PMS ain't nothin' on this, kids.

A pregnancy for an omega is actually quite dangerous. The chance of organ rupture is very high given the arrangement of the internal structures, and because the omega's bone structure is not built to shield the womb in the way a woman's is. An omega pregnancy is rarely longer than six and a half or seven months, because the male body does not have the superstructure for supporting the fetus, and because the normal sized human baby is just too large for the omega to safely, and naturally expel. Ergo, omega-bourn babies are almost always a bit on the preemie side, and infant mortality is as high as childbirth mortality – better than 35%. This is another reason why omegas tend to attract packs – because they are fragile in their pregnancies, and they require more support than a woman does doing the same job. 

They are able to do less, risk less, eat fewer things, and they feel more pain from it. They literally NEED the protection and support of a pack around them if they're to have a chance of surviving to bear more than just the one child.

 

_So that explains omegas. What about the alphas? What's this rut thing you kept talking about?_

Rut is the alpha answer to the hormonal dependency the omegas go through.

Given that omegas needed alpha hormones to conceive, and the human race was fighting extinction at that point, the species fine-tuned alphas to be particularly receptive to, and even dependent on omega hormones as well. Alphas can be fertile with women, though it's not constant enough to bet on, but they are far more fertile with omegas, due to the hormonal sympathy going on between those two statuses.

The omega sexual hormones act as antidepressants and mood stabilizers to alphas. Regular sexual contact with an omega is a way to get the strength and vigor of an alpha without the asshole factor always getting into the way. It also means that alphas imprint on a particular omega quite readily when they're given the chance, and tend to become protective, loyal, and devoted over time. (More on that later.) Unmated alphas tend to become very depressed and self-destructive over long periods of time. (And by unmated, I actually mean celibate, not unbonded. Bonding is a whole other thing.) 

One way that many cultures have dealt with this, is through creating omega enclaves, where strangers can meet for safe, anonymous relief. Alphas are admitted as a kind of supplicant to these enclaves – only ever alone, never allowed to bring possessions, or even his own clothes in, never allowed to encounter other alphas in the enclave, and never allowed to stay once they have helped one omega through his heat. (Afterward, it is not uncommon for that omega to sort of spread that alpha's seed around to other omegas who need at least some temporary relief from their own heats.) This arrangement puts the omegas in control of the arrangement, which is held up socially as only being fair, considering how vulnerable they are during their heats.

Alphas who spend too much time with or near omegas who are in heat, but to whom they can't get access can go into rut, which is a state of sexual obsession that overshadows basic social functions to ridiculous levels. It can occasionally be violent, but most omegas can tell when an alpha is getting ruttish and will avoid him, and alphas can usually tell when another is getting ruttish, and will not actually let him near an omega he might hurt. Some alphas do not get violent when ruttish though; they will stop eating and sleeping, stop physically caring for themselves, stop caring about social conventions. They will masturbate when they feel they must, which will be frequently, and they will display territory marking behavior. Some will go non-verbal, and seemingly regress into a childhood state. 

If a sympathetic omega is not willing to help the poor guy out, sometimes the rut can be broken by an omega child spending time with the alpha until he balances out. The child is not in danger, as he will not be putting out attraction hormones that would bring the alpha to perceive him as sexually available, but his skin and saliva will still contain trace amounts of the omega hormones the alpha is craving. Barring that, ruttish alphas have been known to be calmed by being given the stained bedlinens from an omega's heat, though that solution rarely works for long. If a ruttish alpha shows up to an omega enclave he might be admitted if there is an omega inside who chooses it, but if he is, he will almost certainly be restrained in some way for the encounter, just to ensure the safety of the omega he will be mounting.

 

_And Betas? Where do they come in?_

Betas are what's left of humanity's basic male variety. They are most fertile with women, they react to omega hormones with interest, but not with the kind of compulsion that alphas do, and while they experience something similar to heat, it's acutally a sympathetic hormone cycle in aid of nothing in particular. Betas are a little more fertile than otherwise when they're heated up, but they cannot conceive, only sire, and usually only with a woman. (When one stripe of humanity develops such a strong sexual expression, it's not a stretch to say that others would evolve a mimic to it, as I've got betas and women doing in this culture.)

In pack structures, they tend to be the questioners, the rule-testers, the ones who shove at the box to make sure it's sound – but they also tend to have a strong provider streak, especially when one of their alpha/omega pairs is in seclusion. They are inclined to challenge, but they are still very loyal, especially to those they feel need them – pack children have, in their betas, the most indulgent and protective of godparents. Betas are also frequent adopters of abandoned and orphaned children – something that happens often, given the perils of omega pregnancy, and the frequency with which humans kill each other in general.

Betas are fully capable of leadership positions (all statuses are, really,) but they tend to be exhaustive planners, obsessive of detail, and always very conservative in their decisions. They are used to challenging the rules, not setting them, and so they tend to almost overthink it when they have to be the ones imposing the structure. The general social understanding of things is that an alpha's too reckless to lead by himself, an omega too nice, and a beta too cautious; the only way a pack gets anywhere is if you've got all three cooperating. As with all generalities, it's flawed, but at a high pass, not untrue.

Howard Stark was a beta, and a very atypically reckless one in his early years. Later though, he began to exhibit some of the control-demon behavior that was more typical of a beta without an alpha to push against. 

Obie was an alpha, but Howard took care to make sure he never got enough power in the company to depose him. And we all know how well that worked out...

 

_Okay, so in a world where there are breeding males and very few women left in the world, where to women fit into this matrix?_

Well first and foremost, even with the human mutation that allowed for omega males to exist, human women STILL are better at conceiving, carrying, and giving birth to healthy babies. Their pain thresholds are higher than males, they have better endurance for the process than males, and they are biologically and structurally better suited to the task. This means that, especially in early human history, women were incredibly prized, and in most cases treated very well. (Yes, there will always be abuse, rape, and atrocity, because we ARE talking about humans here, but with women being that rare, there are plenty of alternatives a woman can have if she is not satisfied with her treatment. Abusers learned this pretty quickly.)

Human women in this world were more empowered purely by being so rare – and also by being thickly interspersed (at first) with Jotun warriors who, though presuming themselves women, still knew themselves for warriors and the equals of their peers, no matter the sexual equipment in question. A woman who was not happy with her treatment could very easily find someone to offer her a better situation, and while some cultures made an effort to imprison the women as property, the presence of the Jotun warriors in their midsts made this just not work as effectively as in our own history it has done. Feminism got an early start on the heels of the invasion, with women working out how to use their own value as a bargaining chip, and as power in their own hands. The struggle wasn't seamless, and there were many backslides, but despite being a much more diminished minority in this world, women have managed the same accomplishments as they have in our own world – and a few more.

One of the biggest differences for women in this world is that their connection with education, medicine, and sciences was much more open, and happened much earlier in most cultures. Since risking injury to a daughter was a foolish thing to do, girl children were typically kept from raucous play, dangerous work, and risk of kidnapping by schooling them. This lead to a far greater presence of women in academia as far back as the Greek and Roman times, and carrying straight on through to the modern West. The shape of Women's Lib in the a/b/o world had more to do with them fighting to be allowed free passage and the right to risk themselves physically, than having to fight for equal rights to education and job resources. 

Peggy Carter's presence as an officer in the military is just as much (if not more of) a shocking thing for this world as it was in our own. By the beginning of WWI, the population of women had recovered to nearly 25%, and that percentage didn't noticeably shift during the influenza pandemic that followed there. Between the male casualties of the war, and the girl-boom that followed, the human female population is now approaching %35, and women are much less sheltered/protected than they had been before those two wars.

 

_But how do women fit into the whole breeding cycle thing you've described?_

Here's where that wacky adaptive human biology comes into play. When omega males, with their strongly hormone driven, pheromone-advertised estrus cycles, emerged in the human genome, human females adapted a competitive response to it. (No, this was not a conscious choice they made, this was a species making every attempt to assimilate the new genetic data in its pool, and to keep itself from extinction.)

As a result, women began to experience their fertile periods with the increased pheromonal output, and a much stronger estrus-response that would match in symptom the omega heat. However unlike omegas, females are more or less fertile anywhere in their cycle – pretty much as they are today. And given the biological superiority of their skeletal structure for the purpose, they tend to give birth more safely, and to carry their babies longer than omegas do. And to be able to do it more often over the course of their lifetimes, as well. They hold a solid position in society, but they definitely adapted to the stronger hormonal presentation with a ramping-up of their own scent-markers.

In general, women are pretty much as they ever were, with the exception of being more sensitive and reactive to the hormonal breeding cycles of their male counterparts, however the social habit of ranking women according to their apparent behavior is long-standing. Women who are sensitive, shy, or deferential in manner are considered omega, women who have a strong tendency toward caretaking, management, or organization are considered beta, and women who are dominant and/or combative in personality (or known openly as lesbian) are considered alpha, despite their biological similarity. These rankings have nothing whatsoever to do with their biology or their sexuality, it's just what their male counterparts reflect upon them, because that's kind of what humans DO.

A twist upon this is that Erskine's serum actually did bring about true hermaphroditism in both of its successful tests. Both Steve and Peggy express as both carriers and quickeners. And since Zola's attempts to replicate Erskine's formula were based on stolen, early notes, there have been increased numbers of actual, real female alphas in the girl-boom that followed the end of World War II, and the liberation of the breeding camps. These new, actual female alphas do have a penis that works much as the female spotted hyena's does, and while they can conceive and bear children, the childbirthing process is necessarily caesarian and early term, like an omega's get. 

Peggy Carter was never pregnant herself, but she wound up marrying an omega, and her descendents were all carried by him.

One of the major social changes that came about due to the shift in gender demographics and powers, is that mi midwifery science and early natal care are FAR superior in this world. More women in official medical studies, more focus on making childbearers live long enough to do it again, and more focus on preserving quality of life overall were inevitable to the new arrangement, and the rarity of children for awhile. 

Cesaerian birth is quite safe by comparison to our world, and medical science focused pretty quickly on the problem of keeping those tiny, early babies alive and healthy so they could grow up. Parenting via pack quickly became a thing however, given that Omegas just have a harder time giving birth than women do, and so even with the improvements in medicine, the childbirth mortality rate is still fairly high, and it was even higher in the middle ages, when sanitation was less well understood. Ergo the cultural slant turned toward cooperative packs who served as the co-parents of any child that entered their orbit. 

 

_Great, so how the hell do all these packs and imprints work?_

Due to the strong influences of pheromonal communication, most of these packs identify, and rank each other by swapping fluids -- sweat in a protracted nuzzling session, or by stealing an alpha's clothes between washing sessions; saliva by way of kissing or licking subcutaneous glands; semen and seminal fluid through sexual transfer, or by access to the omega's sheets and clothes after a heat; blood in certain situations involving deeper pack bonding and dominance rituals. Humans being evolved to sapience before this mutation occured, it is an extremely weird thing for urine to factor into these bonding rituals, but yes, the kink is there for some. When, after all, have humans not been kinky fuckers?

So the primary difference between an imprint and a bond lies in intent. Imprints happen through prolonged, repeated normal contact, and they're just a chemical stabilization to the kinds of emotional connections that all humans make anyhow. Several kinds of imprint also dovetail into commonly recognized packbonds, but the significant difference between the two remains that you have to DO something to create a bond, whereas an imprint just happens.

Imprint type A) bloodline passive, as expressed from the sire/dam to their child until the child develops secondary sexual characteristics and begins to put out its own identity scent. At this point, the child, through skin contact with its parents, will absorb the scent markers and hormone output of its parents, and will imprint to them, incurring powerful protective bonds between them, which will survive the child's own sexual maturity more or less undamaged. This is not unlike the oxytocsin release that informs our parent/child bonds in the world we know, however it is stronger, due to the very strong extinction threat, and the extreme vulnerability of the infants born to omegas. Parental imprint is one of the strongest bonds in the a/b/o universe, and because of it, bad parenting is a rare thing indeed. 

(Howard is a very abnormal instance, and most likely actively refused to have much contact with his infant son, in order to be as indifferent/neglectful as he was. Edwin Jarvis, apparently, assumed the parent imprint for Tony somewhat, but not until he was older than he should have been for it. And Bruce's father was an even more abnormal instance. Adults who beat their mates and children rarely keep them – other adults almost always intervene and remove/adopt the threatened ones.)

Imprint type B) denning / sibling imprint; Living for a long time with someone else's scent, no matter their status or yours, will create an imprint of social acceptance between the individuals, like having a brother or sister. They might very well dislike each other deeply, but their hormonal output will drive them to look out for each other to at least some degree, and to find some kind of balance between them. This is the imprint that Steve and Bucky shared from childhood – it required no activity of their own to enforce or create, it just happened because they lived for so long in each other's pockets while they were both coming into their sexual maturity. The fact that they loved each other was not dependent on that bond, but the imprint didn't hurt things at all. Similarly, Pepper and Tony developed this kind of passive sibling bond (though over a longer time, due to less constant contact, and it coming at an older age) between them.

Imprint type C) social / shared territory imprint; This is an adaptation that arose in response to the establishment of cities and towns over nomadic style packs. In this structure, any individual whom you cross paths with regularly without conflict – as in, shake hands with or even hug in passing, -- will establish a non-threat imprint on a subconscious level that, while not as strong as a pack bond, will still assist in neighbors keeping their peace, and rallying together to support each other at need. The bond medium here is skin secretions, either transferred via contact, or through scent exposure, though that requires more time to settle in.

Imprint type D) Courting / sexual priming imprint; An Omega can pick up a passive, social preference for one particular alpha if he spends a great deal of one-on-one time with him in the days coming into his heat cycle. This is generally achieved through scent-influence, and it's easily shaken off if the omega feels threatened or disrespected. This is one of the reasons why omega enclaves came into being in the modern era, so that omegas who were coming into their impressionable period could remove themselves from unwanted scent influence until they were ready to get the heat over with. Like most passive imprints, this medium is entirely scent-based, with some reinforcement from skin contact or saliva (kissing.) It is not absolute, nor does it cloud the judgment, but it tends to smooth the complications of heat cycle somewhat.

Imprint E) Courting active / mate imprint; An omega goes through several low heats per year, but only one or two heats will be 'breeding' heats -- that is, a heat process that lasts for more than a couple of days, and strongly impairs the omega's normal function unless he is exposed to alpha chemistry. Of those breeding heats, in order for an actual pregnancy to result, the omega needs to have had repeated sexual contact with a particular, suitable alpha for at least two or three consecutive heats -- as in, the same alpha. That alpha's seminal release triggers long-term, slow changes in the omega's body which allow the internal organ structure to adapt for the potential of carrying a child. If the environment is too stressful, (emotional duress/distress, lack of resources, or unstable living situation) or if the contact with the alpha is not stable enough, or does not happen with enough consistency, then the Omega's physiognomy will not respond, however the mating imprint will take, and the pair will begin to respond to each other as if they are a bonded pair until a pregnancy results.

Bond type A) hunting / warband bond. (This bond blurs the lines a little, as it's partly incidental, but not entirely.) When individuals set out to hunt, or to fight together, there will almost always be a strong hormone release from whichever alpha they have assembled to follow. The band will tend to push against him, and each other, in a jostling, ramping up kind of behavior, inducing them all to sweat a little, and to share the scents of each other uniformly through the band. Biologically, this increases pack recognition, cuts down on 'friendly fire' instances, and helps to keep an alpha from killing his own if he falls into the red during the fight or the hunt. Packs who fight or hunt together always eat together afterward, and often sleep (as in sleep, not sex,) together as well, until the adrenaline-high scent fades away. 

Warband Packs like the Commandos, who were frequently in the field together, bear a bond that's almost as solid as a bloodline bond, due to being constantly reinforced, and those packs will take on familial structure roles, with the betas being the caretakers, the omegas being the peacemakers, and the alphas being the providers, at least symbolically. Warbands frequently taste each other's blood when there are wounds, and this is often done without thought, but it is one of the ways that the warband bond establishes and maintains its structure against the stress of frequent combat, and occasional loss. Of course the bonding hormones are expressed in the blood as in other fluids, but the blood bond is actually the weakest type. The mutation being sexual in nature rather than combative, blood is not the ideal bonding medium, and tends not to really last too long comparitively.

Bond type B) denning / adoption bond; Due to the high mortality rate of omegas in childbirth, the extreme value of children after the near-extinction event, and the vulnerability of infants born to omegas (and therefore gestated for a shorter time than those born to women,) packs needed a way to insure that orphaned children would not be lost, either to harm, or to other packs, even if the children in question were independently active, or even undergoing puberty, and to overcome any adult tendency to abuse or neglect the get of another in favor of one's own. As the population numbers stabilized and the stronger packs showed their evolutionary advantage, this adoption technique extended to lone adults seeking to join an established pack's social protections. 

There is an element of ritual to this, hence, 'active', involving the pack's alpha and omega both offering food and drink to the newcomer, who eats and drinks, then submits to his skin being licked by them, and by other members of the pack, who scent-mark him thusly as their own. This licking behavior can repeat over a pattern of several days, with pack members licking wrist or throat as a kind of greeting until the newcomer's place within the pack structure is understood. While this ritual is intimate, it is definitively NOT sexual in nature, or in expression. There is nothing in this ritual that triggers a sexual response under normal circumstances.

Bond type C) Clan building bond. A more intimate, less neutral bonding imprint that can be established in instances where several strangers are put into prolonged contact, or forced to cooperation – such as prisoners or refugees, or survivors of tragedy. It involves a core omega and his chosen alpha sharing a kind of sexual contact with the rest of the pack during the omega's fertile heat cycle. When the omega is knotted at that time, he secretes a strong oxytocsin-based fluid, similar to precome, from his penis. Others of the band, regardless of status, will either taste of this, or will rub it on themselves to create an instant familial bond between them all. In a way, this is a mutual adoption of all the pack members into family status, and it is both intimate, and sexual, though it carries no implication or drive to repeat the sexual aspects once the event is over. Packs with several omegas sharing territory might very well repeat this ritual when each of them, to assure equality. Generally, a pack choosing to do this will do it several times, in order to reestablish and reinforce the chosen bonds. They will also do it again when they lose, or add a new member to the matrix. The immediate effect of this bond is a chemically induced empathy between the members that fades in intensity over the course of a few hours or days, to become essentially identical to the sibling/parent/birth-pack form of bond. Obviously, this is the pack bonding that I've illustrated in _Changeling_ for the Avengers.

Bond type D) social dominance bond: This is another ritual style of imprint establishment, one developed to keep wandering loners from getting killed as they'd pass through pack territories. It further adapted when employment outside of one's pack became a normal thing. It involves the show-of-dominance of a bite marking, as well as the temporary scent-marking of the dominant individual's saliva on the recipient, both of which he will carry on him while he is in the pack's territory as a kind of 'pass key'. In modern times, this ritual has faded significantly down, where now a new hire will generally only be given a token item from their boss – a handkerchief or wrist band, for instance, -- and will only wear it/carry it for a day or so. Many dominant individuals, like landlords, superintendents, hosteliers, priests, teachers, and suchlike, no longer extend, or expect this kind of acknowledgement, and other authority figures like politicians and law enforcement would never be extended such a hold in modern times

Bond type E) An adjunct type of imprint that arose in the medieval time, and has been taken up occasionally by various cultures in the modern time, is that of the proxy imprint, where an alpha will, through the mark of his bite in an obvious place, turn over temporary leadership of his troop to another individual for the duration of the mark's visibility. This is an antiquated practice though, harkening back to the middle ages and colonial times, when packs could be isolated and very dependent on each other for survival. It has little place in modern times, though it is still sometimes practiced by extremists and kinksters.

Bond type F) Courting / pair bond; When an alpha/omega pair have established, repeated communion, compatibility, and stability, they can establish a deeper level of connection and relationship permanence by exchanged biting over a particular scent gland during the altered chemical state of being tied. Essentially, during the shared orgasm, certain glands become responsive to direct stimulation, and doing so on a mutual basis will alter the scent mark of both individuals. If repeated in successive heats for a period of time, this scent alteration becomes a permanent thing, reducing the availability/attraction factor for the omega and alpha both where strangers are concerned. In a way, this creates something like an addictive dependency on a particular person, the withdrawal from which is really a difficult thing – hence the social assumption that bond survivorship is hell, and survivors frequently suicide rather than endure it. 

 

_Okay, so that seems pretty clear. Why the hell was Steve freaking out about it?_

In Steve's time, sexual education was a thing handled exclusively by parents and church elders. It was not until the sexual revolution of the late 50's and early 60's that sex education became commonly addressed in schools. So as a result, Steve was never actually told much accurate information about any of the other rankings, or about girls either. Most of what he came to adulthood 'knowing' was filtered through the behavioral control training of the orphanage nuns, or whispered from other kids trying to impress each other with bullshit. So he has a stilted understanding of his birth-status, what would be expected of him, and what role he would play in any cultural situation. Then when his status is changed to include all possibilities, the only people who expected the meta-alpha result, and could have sat him down to explain what he could expect were Doctor Erskine, who was killed, and Peggy Carter, who was sent to London immediately. When she caught back up with him again, Steve had learned and worked out some things, but a lot of the subtle social bonding information he would have been taught if he'd grown up an alpha, he never encountered at all. 

Likewise, Bucky's understanding of being an omega was entirely informed by his orphanage upbringing, and the pornography of his time, and as such was wildly distorted. A large part of the dysfunction I have portrayed in that pairing arises from this sense of status-dimorphism going on with each of them, and the struggles they're going through to adjust to the changes, and to work out what's expected of, and allowed to them. 

The tragedy there is that if both of them had had just a little more time without the war in the way, they'd have figured everything out, and come together just fine. On some level, Steve realizes this.

Also, for the purposes of this story, Natasha is Bucky's child by Steve. I vaguely hinted at that, but I want to say it outright here. She was the child Steve thought he might have lost, but never really knew. She would have been a natural alpha, but the Red Room neutered all of their young operatives before they could express their sexuality as a matter of course, preferring the adaptability of an operative who could mimic any status with the use of perfumes and prosthetics over one who might be compromised by internal, biological chemistry. 

The sexual nature of her contact with Steve being limited to the pack bonding process, it's unlikely either of them would be specifically horrified by that exact detail of it if the relationship were verified -- they'd be far more concerned by other things instead. However, as not even Bucky is aware of the relationship, even when he was training her for the Red Room, it is unlikely that any of them will ever put the details together. The only people who were in a position to know for sure are dead, and barring anybody putting a genetic scan of all three together to compare details, there's no way they'll find out. The pack bond will be particularly sticky between Steve and Natasha though, given the biological predisposition to it that's already in place.

 

_Okay, so what's the deal with the poly-bond thing Tony was teasing Coulson about?_

Another thing that arose from the sexual revolution aside from birth control, and better rights of choice for omegas and women, was acceptance of beta/male pairings -- essentially, homosexual-by-preference relationships. 

In Steve's time, betas went with women, and only concerned themselves with omegas if there was no alpha around to do the job. Betas who preferred the company of either alphas or omegas were considered bent, broken, deviant, and all the other things that translate to homophobia in our world. The sexual revolution began to change that, but it's only been in the last decade or so that legal protections for beta/male and female/female relationships have begun to be set down. Pair bonding laws are on the books in several states, and the only reason Phil and Clint are not currently married is that they can't legally do so with Natasha too, and they don't want to leave her legally out of the mate-bond they already share between the three of them.

She would actually agree, if it were legal for the three of them to be married, and learning that would surprise them all more than just a little bit.

 

_They still swear by Christ, I notice; how does that work within the a/b/o world?_

Christ was an omega, and clearly recognized as one in scriptures. He was the pack core of a gang of betas, alphas, and women, but scripture has been stripped of any reference to him quickening, mating, or even experiencing a heat. So it is from the traditions of Judeo-Christianity that heat-enclaves, and omega isolation arose. It bears some similarity in our world, to how women are essentially expected to quarantine themselves during their periods, only without the implication of uncleanliness. The implication is that to remain safe, and pure for the alpha to whom they will later bond, they must retreat from society and from the company of those who might react to their scent with impure action and thought. The 'beloved deciple' is understood to have been a beta, and therefore unworthy to bond with any omega, let alone the Son of God, which means that the Church is still a driving force behind the anti-gay culture in the world.

Christian canon is full of saints who were martyred on the basis of their heat/rut cycle, and I'm sorry to say it, Catholicism is just as fucked up about sex and sexuality as it ever was. One interesting change though, is in the sacrament offered at mass. Now, instead of eating the host and drinking the wine, the sacrament is offered in a dish of oil, where a dot is painted over each eyelid, and a dot placed on the tongue, mirroring the pack-bond ritual presumed to have taken place between Christ and the Deciples. However it is never addressed how Christ might have possibly released the bonding-milt if he'd never been knotted. Just one of those 'where did Cain's wife come from' problems, ultimately -- good believers just don't ask about it. Another tradition that's arisen in the church relative to this, is that the priesthood is seriously FULL of omegas. In the history of Rome, there have been perhaps two or three Popes who have been of any other status, and one of those was murdered by his guards, while another was most likely assassinated. 

The symbolic power of omegas has been pretty high for most of history, but the actual authority and power of most of the status has not been very stable or strong. Women, being exceedingly rare, were likewise very highly commoditized, but also because of their rarity, had much of their independence removed by most societies. Women have very much been property in this world, chiefly on account of their rarity, and their superior ability to not only conceive, but to survive repeated childbirths. 

Also due to the rarity of women in early human culture, the title of Queen does not refer to a woman exclusively, but rather to the person who will give birth to the heir. Ergo, Elizabeth the first of England, and every unmarried female monarch that followed her, have been known as KING unless and until they married. The title of Queen was something a person earned by becoming pregnant, and in fact it was something of a tradition in the West to leave the Queen's coronation until quite late in the pregnancy, so that he or she would be very obviously gravid at the ceremony. The objectification of pregnancy was, and still is, a big Thing in this culture, and as such many uniquely feminine health concerns were studied much more carefully in that world. 

With so few women in the world, losing them to preventable medical conditions was unacceptable. Also, midwives weren't ever persecuted, but were rolled in officially to most cultures' medical practitioners and studies, so female doctors are, and were, a rather common thing. Sarah Rogers was, in fact, a doctor rather than a nurse, and her decision to work with tuberculosis patients was allowed because she'd caught a near-fatal dose of influenza just after Steve was born, and the high fevers had rendered her sterile. So since she could no longer conceive, the hospital officials allowed her to work in the TB ward. The pay was higher because of the risk of infection, and she needed the money because of Steve's sicknesses.

The girl-boom following the war was what gave real strength to women's fight for cultural power. There'd been some strides in America before, at the point where historically you'd expect them -- women's suffrage, and suchlike -- but the sudden appearance of so many more females in the world gave lawmakers enough pause to consider their needs beyond their capacity to procreate. 

 

So there. There's a few of the worldbuilding notes I had in mind while creating this ... um... it's a novel, really, isn't it? I guess I have to admit that it is. Anyhow, I hope this has answered some of the questions you'd had. I'm not into hardcore graphs and charts kind of biology, so I'll leave the chromosome mapping to those who will do it better and more accurately. You'll have to be satisfied with soft-sciences of anthropology, behavioral studies, psychology, and forensic history here. (Yes, I kinda made that last one up, but it's totally legit when one is playing the 'what if this one thing changed' game, and so say I.)

If there's anything else you want to better understand, or contribute to this meta, by all means say so in the comments, and let's chew it to pieces between us. I love that kind of idea interchange, so long as it's respectful and enthusiastic.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Nothing but Radiance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2139807) by [Fallwater023](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallwater023/pseuds/Fallwater023)
  * [I Know, I Know, I Know (I Know You Want Me)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2297681) by [equalopportunityobsessor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/equalopportunityobsessor/pseuds/equalopportunityobsessor)




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